Chapter II

L a c a n ia n PSYCHOANALYSIS

AROUND REALMS OF LANGUAGE

Lacanian Psychoanalysis Around Realms of Language

Chapter II

Great is the power o f your truth and it shall prevail.Carl Jung

/ realized that henceforth / belonged to those who according to Hubble's expression have disturbed the world's sleep.

Sigmund FreudI think where / am not; therefore I am where I do not think ... meaning flees from our grasp along the verbal thread...! am not wherever / am the plaything o f my thought; I think o f what / am where I do not think to think.

Jacques Lacan

In order to understand some o f the major Lacanian concepts— such

as the development o f infant, the function o f ego, the treatment of

unconscious and other related issues — as well as their relevance

to literary analysis and interpretation, it is essential to note that his

.greatest contribution to literary studies is the way he reinterpreted

Sigmund Freud and reformulated Freudian theories in such a way

as to make these compatible for literary studies. The credit o f

establishing Psychoanalysis as a distinctive field o f study, as is

well known, ultimately goes to Freud, the real originator o f

Psychoanalysis, whose study o f psyche is primarily based on the

46

principle o f causality and determinism1. M.A.R. Habib rightly

points out:

That Freud o p en s up a num ber o f literary critica l aven u es: the lin k in g o f

a crea tive w ork to an in -depth study o f an author’s p sy c h o lo g y , u sin g a

v a stly a ltered co n cep tio n o f hum an su b jectiv ity ; the tracing in art o f

prim al p sy c h o lo g ic a l ten d en c ies and co n flic ts; and the understanding

o f art and literature as in tegrally recurring hum an o b se ss io n s , fear, and

a n x ie tie s .2

While accepting the tenets o f the nineteenth century science

with its metaphors o f mechanism and impersonal forces, Freud

developed a language for his newly established science with the

objective o f interpreting man and society. His reading o f the

unconscious' shows that it is primarily the storehouse o f instinctual

desires, needs, childhood wishes, unsolved conflicts, painful

experiences and emotions, fears and memories. He says that once

1 Sean Homer. Jacques Lacan (C ritical Idiom Series), London: Routledge. 2005. p.4.

2 M. A. R. Habib. M odern L iterary Criticism and Theory: A H isto ry , USA: Blackwell

Publishing, 2008, p .89.

3 The idea o f an unconscious mind originated in antiquity and has been explored

across cultures. It was recorded between 2500 and 600 B.C in the Hindu texts

known as the Vedas, found today in Ayurvedic m edicine. Paracelsus is

credited with the first scientific mention o f the unconscious in his work Von

den Krankeiten (1567) and his clinical m ethodology created an entire system

that is regarded as the beginning o f modern scientific psychology.

Shakespeare explored the role o f the unconscious in many o f his plays,

without naming it as such. Western philosophers such as Spinoza. Leibniz,

Schopenhauer, and N ietzsche, developed a western view o f mind which

foreshadowed those o f Freud.

47

anything enters the mental life, it never perishes. He even shows

that unconscious comes into existence when we are very young

through repression, expunging from consciousness, these unhappy

psychological events. In fact, the concept o f the ‘unconscious’

given by him and later modified by Lacan made it the most vital

and debatable subject matter o f psychoanalysis.4

Prior to Freud, the working o f the mind was taken mostly as

a conscious phenomenon but Freud devised the typographical

divisions o f the mind into the conscious, the unconscious and the

preconscious. Later, he named them as the id (forming the reservoir

o f libido or psychic energy), the ego (representing conscious life)

and the superego (functioning as the voice o f conscience and

censorship). Freud believes:

That the e g o represents the organ ized part o f the p sy ch e in contrast to

the u n organ ized e lem en ts o f the u n co n sc io u s (the id ) and argues: the

e g o is that part o f the id that has been m o d ified by d irect in flu en ce o f

the external w o r ld ... . T he eg o represents w hat m ay be ca lled reason

4 For further details see, Sigmund Freud. The C om plete In troductory Lectures on

Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey. N ew York: W. W. Norton, 1966;

Sigmuiid Freud. A G eneral Introduction to P sychoanalysis. Trans. Joan

Riviere, N ew York: Pocket Books, 1972; Sigmund Freud. The F reud Reader.

Ed. Peter Gay. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989 and Sigmund Freud.

H istorica l A nd E xpository Works on P sychoanalysis , Volum e 15, New Delhi:

Shrijee’s Book International, 2003.

48

and co m m o n sense , in con trast to the id, w h ich co n ta in s the p a ss io n s '\

In this sense, the ego is related to consciousness but is

also in constant tension with the demands o f the unconscious

and the imperatives o f the superego. The function o f the ego,

therefore, is defensive insofar as it mediates between the

unconscious (the id) and the demands o f external reality (the

superego). The truth of this conceptualization, as Lacan

comments in “Aggressivity and Psychoanalysis”, is evident

in infantile transitivity: that phenomenon wherein one infant

hit by another proclaims: T hit him !’, and visa-versa.6

Similarly, while describing his theory o f the psychological

development o f the infant, Freud discusses the three stages in

7

infants — the oral, the anal, and the phallic — arguing that it is

the Oedipus complex and Castration complex that end

polymorphous perversity and create “adult” beings. Against this,

5 Donald E. Hall. Subjectivity (the New C ritical Idiom ), London: Routledge, p.616 See, A. Freud. ‘The Ego and The M echanisms o f D efen ce’, The W riting o f Anna

Freud, Vol. 2, N ew York: International Universities Press, 1966.

7 Definitions o f psychoanalytic terms, principally Freudian although also including a

number o f Lacanian and Kleinian entries can be found in J. Laplanche and J.

B. Pontalis, The Language o f P sychoanalysis, trans. Donald N icholson-

Smith, with an introduction by Daniel Lagache. London: Karnac Books. 1998

and see also R. D. Hinshelwood, A D ictionary o f Kleinian Thought. London:

Free A ssociation Books, 1987

49

Lacan creates different categories to explain a similar trajectory

from “infant” to “adult.” He puts forward his three newly devised

concepts - need , demand, and desire - which roughly correspond

to the three phases o f development or three fields in which humans

develop or grow: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real?

It must be, however, pointed at the outset that Lacan

reinterpreted Freud in the light o f Structuralist and Post

Structuralist theories and thus changed psychoanalysis from an

essentially humanist philosophy or theory to a Post Structuralist

one. One o f the basic premises of humanism was the notion of a

stable self with free will and self-determination that Freud’s notion

o f the unconscious questioned and destabilized. By bringing the

contents o f the unconscious into consciousness, he could minimize

repression and neurosis. Freud’s goal was to strengthen the ego, the

“I” self, the conscious or rational identity, so it would be more

powerful than the unconscious.

In his approach, Lacan broadened the scope o f Unconscious

saying that the unconscious is always at work and the being of

everything. The distinctive feature o f Lacanian theory, however, is

8 For more details see, The Seminar Book XI & The Four Fundam ental Concepts o f

P sychoanalysis. trans.Alan Sheridan, (ed) Jacques-Alain Miller, London:

Penguin, 1977 and Dany Nobus. Jacques Lacan an d The Freudian Practice

o f Psychoanalysis, (ed) London: Routledge, 2000.

50

its emphasis on language and his contention that the Unconscious

is structured like a Language, an assertion that needs to be viewed

in the broader perspective according to which the unconscious

comes into existence only with the individual’s access to or entry

into language. In other words, a child learns its mother tongue from

its sense o f how the world is and how it experiences its biological

body. The unconscious is also structured like a language in another

way: the operations o f the unconscious resemble two very common

processes o f language: Metaphor and Metonymy, an opposition of

two figures first discussed by linguist Roman Jakobson9. Lacan

suggests that the unconscious works in the same way that language

does, ‘along the two axes of Metaphor and Metonymy which

generate the signified’. Metaphor works by linking two concepts to

each other and Metonymy works by association or closeness rather

than likeness, particularly through synecdoche, in which a part is

taken to stand for the whole. In terms o f how the unconscious

works, its metaphoric structure involves moving from one signifier

to another found with it; metonymically, it slides from one to

another that is similar. According to Tyson:

9 Sue V ice (ed). Psychoanalytical Criticism : A Reader. United Kingdom: Polity

Press, 1996. p. 1 16.

51

t B oth m etaphor and m eton ym y in v o lv e an ab sen ce , a kind o f lo ss or

lack: th e y ’re both stand-ins for so m eth in g b e in g pushed a sid e , so to

sp e a k .10

Lacan bases this concept on Freud’s account o f the two main

mechanisms — condensation and displacement — which are

essentially linguistic phenomena, where meaning is either

condensed (in metaphor) or displaced (in metonymy). Metaphor,

according to Lacan, is akin to the unconscious process called

condensation (both processes bring dissimilar things together) and

metonymy is akin to the unconscious process o f displacement (both

processes substitute a person or object for another). He believes

that Freud’s theories and concepts 11 such as dream analysis and

most o f his analysis o f the unconscious symbolism depend on word

play, puns, associations, etc. which are chiefly verbal. Accordingly

the contents o f the unconscious are invariably acutely aware of

language, particularly o f the structure o f language. While saying

10 Lois Tyson. C ritica l Theory Today: A U ser-Friendly Guide, London: Routledge,

2006, P. 10

11 It is important to mention that Freud devised many theories such as Theory o f

Jokes, Mind, Dreams, Psycho-pathology o f Everyday Life, Sexuality Libido,

Repression, Reaction Formation Sublimation, Character, Structure,

M etapsychology, N eurosis, The Ego Psychology, The Id . The Super-Ego,

Society and Civilization only to prove that Psychoanalysis is more the

dispassionate science that only explains the unconscious determinations

operate in every walk o f our life and activities.

52

so, Lacan seems to have modified the ideas and concepts o f

Ferdinand de Saussure who talked about the relations between

signifier and signified that form a sign. Following Saussure, Lacan

insisted that the structure of language is the negative relation

among signs. While focusing on relations between signifiers, he

argues that the elements in the unconscious — wishes, desires, and

images — form signifier and these signifiers form a signifying

chain : one signifier has meaning only because it is not some other

signifier. Like other Post-structural theoreticians, he stated that

there are no signifieds; there is nothing that a signifier ultimately

refers to. If there were, then the meaning o f any particular signifier

would be relatively stable: there would be, in Saussure’s terms, a

relation o f signification between signifier and signified, and that

relation would create or guarantee some kind o f meaning. Lacan

believes that the relations o f signification don’t exist rather; there

are only the negative relations, relations o f value, w'here one

signifies what it is because it is not something else. Because o f this

lack o f signifieds, he says, the chain o f signifiers12 is constantly

12 See, Lacan’s Sem inar XI

53

sliding and shifting and circulating. There is no anchor, nothing

that ultimately gives meaning or stability to the whole system.13

The reader is often reminded of Jacques Derrida according to

whom meaning is only the mental trace left behind by the play of

signifiers, and that trace consists o f the differences by which we

define a word. Hence, meaning resides in words (or in things) only

when we distinguish their difference from other words (or things).14

It is clear that Derrida believes in Language having two important

features: one, its play o f signifiers continually defers, postpones,

meaning and the other the meaning it seems to have is the result o f

the differences by which we distinguish one signifier from

another.15 Even Michel Foucault says that no discourse by itself

can adequately explain the complex dynamics o f social pow'er

because there is a dynamic, unstable, interplay among discourses as

they are invariably in flux, overlapping and competing with one

another every moment.

13 For more details see, Jacques Lacan. Ecrits: A Selection, Trans. Alan Sheridan,

London: Routledge, 2001.

14 At the start o f Seminar 3, Lacan maintained that the speech generally addresses

itse lf to others (interlocutors and addressees, including oneself) yet

im m ediately adding that beyond these others, speech also involves the Other.

The Other is nothing but the dimension o f the others that remains unknown to

the speaker, because he approaches them via language.

15 Lois Tyson. 2006, p.253.

54

It is also important to note that while as Freud’s

psychoanalysis focuses on the author and or the characters in the

literary work, Lacan following the structuralist and post-

structuralist approaches focuses on the language o f the text. In his

Ecrits, Lacan, while reinterpreting Freud in the light o f structuralist

and post structuralist theories o f discourse, challenges some o f the

traditional and orthodox interpretation o f his main tenets and

doctrines. Orthodox Freudian doctrine views the unconscious as

chaotic, primordial, instinctual, and pre-verbal while as Lacan

believes that the Unconscious is like a continually circulating chain

or multiple chains o f signifiers, with no anchor, or to use Derrida’s

terms, no centre. He argues that the process o f becoming “se lf’ is

the process o f trying to fix, to stabilize, and to stop the chain of

signifiers so that the stable meaning - including the meaning of

“I” — becomes possible. According to Lacan the signifying chain

has a life o f its own which cannot be securely anchored to a world

o f things because there is a perpetual sliding and slipperiness o f the

signified ‘under the signifier’. Accordingly, he argues, meaning is

sustained by anything other than reference to another meaning.16

Lacan even effectively reformulates in linguistic terms

Freud’s account o f the Oedipus complex. Freud had posited that

16 See, the three postfaces to his Seminar on “The Purloined Letter".

55

the infant’s desire17 for its mother is prohibited by father18 who

threatens the infant with castration. Faced with this threat, the

infant represses his desire, thereby opening up the dimension of the

unconscious, which is for Lacan not a “place” but a relation to the

social world o f law, morality religion and conscience. According to

Freud, the child internalizes through the father’s commands the

appropriate standards o f socially acceptable thought and behaviour.

Like Freud, Lacan’s infant initiates as something inseparable

from its mother that is, the child, having no sense o f ‘se lf or

‘individuated identity’, is not conscious of its body as a coherent

unified whole and can hardly differentiate between se lf and other,

between itself and mother. In other words, the most crucial factor

for the baby is feeding which mother gratifies and it feels as though

it and she are only one entity or individual. At this stage, therefore,

17 It is a fact that desire has been identified as a philosophical problem since

Antiquity. Plato argues in his Republic that individual desires must be

postponed in the name o f the higher ideal. Within the teachings o f Buddhism,

craving or desire is thought to be the cause o f all suffering. By eliminating

craving, a person can attain ultimate happiness or Nirvana.

18 Lacan introduced the concept o f the name o f the father in 1953 lectures on the

neurotic individual myth, in order to separate the real father, a flesh and

blood man, from the sym bolic function o f the father, which he interpreted as

ultimately determined regulation o f the natural order o f things. In the

contem poraneous 'Rom e Discourse", he further specified that ‘ in the name o f

the father..." We must recognise the support o f the sym bolic function that,

since the dawn o f history, has identified his person [the person o f father] with

the figure o f the law.

56

the baby is driven by Need — it needs food, comfort, safety, to be

changed, etc. All these needs are satisfiable by an object because it

gets a breast or a bottle when it feels hunger and gets hugged when

it needs safety.

After passing through the phase o f needs, the child normally

switches over to the phase o f demands where it has to separate

itself from its mother in order to form its own identity: a pre­

requisite for entry into civilization and culture. In other words,

when the child feels the discrepancy between its inner needs and

the outer satisfaction o f those needs, it learns that our own world is

not the whole world. It finds that it is not autonomous but there is

an outside something, an ‘Other’ who feeds it or more generally,

on whom it is dependent.

Keeping these things in view, it becomes obvious that the

demands o f the baby are not satisfiable with objects because a

demand is always a demand for recognition or love from another.19

This awareness o f separation, or the fact o f otherness, creates an

anxiety, a sense o f loss. The baby then demands a reunion, a return

to that original sense o f fullness and non- separation that it had

19 The process works like this: the baby starts to becom e aware that it is separate from

the mother, and that there exist things that are not part o f it: thus the idea o f

“other” is created. However, the binary opposition o f “se lf ' or "other"" doesn't

yet exist because the baby still doesn't have a coherent sense o f “self".

57

earlier. However, all this seems to be impossible because once the

baby ‘knows’ and its knowledge shifts from an unconscious level

to a higher awareness level it comes to realize that the idea o f an

“Other” exists. Hence, demand is the demand for the fullness and

the completeness which is impossible, because that lack, or

absence, the sense o f “otherness”, is the condition for the baby to

become or emerge as an independent self or subject. This is were

Lacan’s Mirror Stage exists.

Lacan’s desir follows Freud’s concept o f Wunsch and it is

central to Lacanian theories because the aim o f talking cure — -

psychoanalysis — is precisely to lead the analysand to uncover the

truth about their desire, though this is only possible if that desire is

articulated or spoken. Lacan says that desire is named in the

presence o f the other. He believes that the subject should come to

recognize and to name his/her desire because that is the efficacious

action o f analysis. But it is not a question o f recognizing something

which would be entirely given. In naming it, the subject creates,

brings forth, a new presence in the world. Therefore, what is

important is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring

• • 20desire into existence.

20 For details see, Anika Lemaire. Jacques Lacan, trans. David M acey. L,ondon:

Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1977, pp. 161-167 and Dany Nobus. Jacques

58

Although the truth about desire is somehow present in

discourse, discourse can never articulate the whole truth about

desire: whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is

always a leftover, a surplus. On the basis o f this fundamental

understanding, Lacan maintained throughout his career that desire

is the desire o f the Other.

Lacanian theory, as analysed above, does not deny that

infants are always born into the world with basic biological needs

that require constant or periodic satisfaction. Lacan’s stress,

however, is that, from a very early age, the child’s attempts to

satisfy these needs become caught up in the dialectics o f its

exchanges with others. Because its sense o f self is only ever

garnered from identifying with the images o f these others, Lacan

argues that it demonstrably belongs to humans to desire- directly-

as or through another or others.

Lacan the Freudian P ractice o f Psychoanalysis, London: Routledge, 2000,

pp.27 - 29, 65 66 and 166 - 176.

59

The Mirror Stage remains “one o f the most frequently

anthologized and referenced of Lacan’s texts”21 and is concerned

with the formation of the ego through the identification with an

image o f the self. It describes the formation o f the Ego via the

22process o f objectification : the Ego being the result o f feeling

dissention between one’s perceived visual appearance and one’s

perceived emotional reality. The moment o f identification is to

Lacan a moment o f jubilation since it leads to an imaginary sense

of mastery, yet the jubilation may also be accompanied by a

depressive reaction, when the infant compares his own precarious

sense o f mastery with the omnipotence o f the mother. This

identification also involves the ideal ego which functions as a

21 In his 1949 paper, Lacan locates the “mirror stage’", his most renowned concept, in

the developm ent o f a child between the age o f 6 and 18 months because at

this stage a child can recognize his own image in a mirror. Prior to the Mirror

Stage, Lacan contends, the child is little more than a 'body in bits and

pieces', unable to clearly separate / and Other, and wholly dependant for its

survival upon its first nurturers. The illusion o f unity and enduring identity

that occurs in the mirror phase also anticipates the life-long alienation o f the

ego, not only from the objects that surround it, objects o f desire, but also

from itself.21 For Lacan, in the recognition o f its mirror-image, the child is

having its first anticipation o f itself as a unified and separate individual. See,

M .A.R. Habib. M odern L iterary C riticism an d Theory: A H istory. USA:

Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2008, p.7.

22 In his fourth Seminar, La relation d'objet, Lacan states that "the mirror stage is far

from a mere phenomenon which occurs in the developm ent o f the child. It

illustrates the conflictual nature o f the dual relationship".

60

promise o f future wholeness sustaining the Ego in anticipation. For

Lacan, this ‘jubilation’ is a testimony to how. in the recognition of

its mirror- image, the child is having its first anticipation o f itself as

a unified and separate individual. Before this time, Lacan contends,

the child is little more than a ‘body in bits and pieces’, unable to

clearly separate T and ‘Other’, and wholly dependant for its

survival upon its first nurturers. The implications o f this

observation on the mirror stage, in Lacan’s reckoning, are far-

reaching.

It is an established fact that an individual’s attempt to speak

and think in the second or third person is a permanent possibility of

adult human experience. What is decisive in these phenomena,

according to Lacan, is that the ego is at base an object: an artificial

projection o f subjective unity modelled on the visual images of

objects and others that the individual confronts in the world.

Identification with the ego, Lacan maintains, is what underlies the

unavoidable component o f aggressivity in human behaviour

especially evident amongst infants, and which Freud recognized in

his Three Essays on Sexuality when he stressed the primordial

ambivalence of children towards their love objects.

In complete opposition to any Jungian or romantic

conceptions, Lacan described the unconscious as a kind of

discourse: the discourse of the Other. Presenting the three

interrelated concerns — the child’s castration as a decisive point in

its becoming a speaking subject; the ‘interpretive paradigm’ in

Freud’s texts; and the efficacy o f psychoanalytic interpretation as

the ‘magical’ power o f the word — Lacan allocated language a

great importance in the psychoanalytical criticism. According to

him, it is only after the child accedes to castration and the Law-of-

the-father that it becomes fully competent as a language-speaker

within its given social collective order.

From the above assertions, we can deduce the conclusion

that like the later Wittgenstein, Lacan’s position is that to learn a

language is to learn a set o f rules or laws for the use and

combination o f words. This is virtually a phenomenological

concept o f Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, according to

which human consciousness is not the passive recognition that

brings the child great pleasure: a subject is to experience the world

as a meaningful totality and language is crucial to this capability.

Lacan’s innovation in “The Mirror Stage” was to combine

the phenomenological distinction between subject and ego with a

psychological understanding o f the role o f images and the

constructed nature o f the self through the philosophical category' of

62

the dialectic23. Dialectical thought, as conceived by Hegel,

foregrounds the contradictory nature of all things, as all phenomena

can be said to contain their opposite; their own notion. Out o f this

relationship or unity o f opposites something new will emerge in an

endless process o f transformation. It was Hegel’s great insight,

contends Lacan, to reveal how ‘each human being is in the being of

the other’24.

The mirror image is also known in psychoanalytic

terminology as an “ideal ego,” a perfect whole ‘se lf that has no

insufficiency. Once this “ideal ego” becomes internalized, we build

our sense o f “self,” our “Identity, by misidentifying ourselves with

this ideal ego. By doing this, we imagine a self that has no lack, no

notion o f absence or incompleteness. The fiction o f the stable,

whole, unified self that we see in the mirror becomes a

compensation for having lost the original oneness with the

mother’s body.

In short, according to Lacan, we lose our unity with the

mother’s body once we enter into culture because the child’s self­

23 He got introduced to the dialectic in a seminar given by Alexander Kojeve that was

attended, am ong others, by Jean Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and

George Bataille.

24 Jacques Lacan. The Sem inar o f Jacques Lacan, Book II, ' ‘The Ego in F reu d ' and in

th e ’ Technique o f P sychoanalysis' 1954-1955. ed. J.A. M iller trans. S.

Tom aselli, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988. p. 72.

63

concept, its ego or “Identity” will never match up to its own being.

The child’s image in the mirror is both smaller and more stable

than the child, and is always “other”. The child, for the rest o f its

life, will misrecognize its self as “Other”, as the image in the

mirror that provides an illusion of self and o f master. The mirror

stage cements a self or other dichotomy, where the child projects

its ideas o f self or Other dichotomy, where previously the child

had known only “Other,” but not “self.” For Lacan, the

identification o f “se lf is always in terms o f Other.25

Lacan uses the term “Other” in a number o f ways, which

make it even harder to grasp. First, and perhaps the easiest, is in the

sense where “other” is the “not-me”, but becomes “me” in the

mirror stage. Lacan also uses an idea o f Other, with a capital “O”,

to distinguish between the concept o f the other and actual others.

The image the child sees in the mirror is an Other, and it gives the

child the idea o f other as a structural possibility, one which makes

possible the structural possibility o f “I” or self. In other words, the

child encounters actual others: its own image, other people and

25 See, Philippe Julien. Jacques L a ca n ’s Return to Freud: The Real, The Symbolic,

an d The Im aginary , trans. Devra Beck Simiu, N ew York: N ew York

University Press, 1994; Grigg Russell. “Signifier, Object, transference",

Lacan a n d the Subject o f Language , ed. Ellie Ragland - Sullivan and Mark

Bracher, N ew York: Routledge, 1991 pp. 100-5 and Christian Metz. The

Im aginary Signifier, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1981.

64

understand the idea o f “Otherness,” things that are not itself. Lacan

refers to this loss o f object o f desire as objet petit a , or object small

a with the letter a standing for autre, the French word for other.26

The little other is the other who is not really other, but a reflection

and projection o f the Ego. He is both the counterpart or the other

people in whom the subject perceives a visual likeness (semblable),

and the specular image or the reflection o f one’s body in the

mirror. In this way the little other is entirely inscribed in The

Imaginary order. The big Other designates a radical alterity, an

otherness transcending the illusory otherness o f the Imaginary

because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Lacan

equates this radical alterity with language and the law: the big

Other is inscribed in The Symbolic order, being Symbolic insofar

as it is particularized for each subject. We can speak o f the Other as

a subject in a secondary sense, only when a subject may occupy

this position and thereby embody the Other for another

subject.When he argues that speech originates not in the Ego nor in

the subject, but in the Other, Lacan stresses that speech and

26 Lacan often used an algebraic syrnbology for his concepts: the big Other is

designated A (for French A utre) and the little other is designated a (italicized

French autre). He asserts that an awareness o f this distinction is fundamental

to analytic practice: 'the analyst must be imbued with the difference between

A and a , so he can situate h im self in the place o f Other, and not the other'.

65

language are beyond one’s conscious control; they come from

another place, outside consciousness, and then ‘the unconscious is

the discourse o f the Other’. When conceiving the Other as a place,

Lacan refers to Freud’s concept o f physical locality, in which the

unconscious is described as “the other scene” . It is the mother who

first occupies the position o f the big Other for the child, it is she

who receives the child’s primitive cries and retroactively sanctions

them as a particular message.

A study o f Lacanian mirror stage reveals that this stage

marks the child’s first recognition or understanding o f lack or

absence and its search for the moment o f the distinction between

se lf and other. It also provides the grounds for the ego ideal, the

image o f the ego, derived from others, which the ego strives to

achieve or live up to. Besides, the mirror stage initiates the child

into the two-person structure of imaginary identifications, orienting

it forever towards identification with dependence on images and

representations for its own forms or outline. As Lacan rewrites this

process, the child, passes through the three orders or states o f

human mental disposition: the imaginary order, the symbolic order,

27and the real.

27 M .A.R.Habib. M odern L iterary C riticism an d Theory: A History, London:

Blackw ell Publishing, 2008. p. 9 1.

66

The Imaginary Order: The imaginary order is a pre-oedipal phase

where an infant is yet to distinguish itself from its mother’s body or

to recognize the lines o f demarcation between itself and the objects

in the world; indeed, it does not yet know itself as a coherent entity

or self. Hence, as elaborated by Habib:

T he im agin ary phase is on e o f unity (b e tw een the ch ild and its), as w ell

as o f im m ed ia te p o sse ss io n ( o f m other and o b jec ts), a co n d itio n o f

reassuring o f p len itu d e, a w orld co n sist in g w h o lly o f im a g es (h en ce

“ im ag in ary” ) that is not fragm ented or m ed iated by d ifferen ce , by

c a teg o r ies , in a w ord , by lan gu age and s ig n s28.

During this period, the child acquires language, and

experiences a change that, for Lacan, is o f paramount importance

because the child’s acquisition o f language means a number of

important things, including its initiation into the symbolic order;

for language is first and foremost a symbolic system of

signification. Our entrance into the symbolic order involves the

experience o f separation from others, and the biggest separation is

the separation from the intimate union we experienced with our

mother during our immersions in the imaginary order. For Lacan,

this separation constitutes our most important experience o f loss,

and it is one that will haunt us all our lives.

281bid, p.91.

67

A study o f the Lacanian concept o f the Imaginary indicates

that this stage is equated to child’s first entry into social life where

it gradually understands its difference from mother which turns out

to be the base o f its own individual identity, an identity which is

fundamentally alienated. The symbolic, marked by the concept o f

desire, represents adulthood or the structure o f language or the

discourse o f law that we have to enter into in order to become

speaking subject or normal subjects o f the society.

Language is empty because it is an endless process o f

difference and absence: instead of being able to possess anything in

its fullness, the child simply moves from one to another, along a

linguistic chain which is potentially infinite. One signifier implies

another and that another, and so on ad infinitum: the ‘metaphorical’

world o f the mirror has yielded ground to the metonymic chain of

signifiers, meanings, or signifieds will be produced; but no object

or person can ever be fully ‘present’ in this chain. This endless

movement from one signifier to another is what Lacan means by

desire. All desire Springs from lack, which it strives continually to

fill. Human language works by such lack: the absence o f the real

objects designated by signs point to the fact that words nave

meaning only by virtue o f the absence and exclusion o f others. To

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enter language, then, is to become a prey to desire: language, Lacan

remarks, is ‘what hollows being into desire’.29

The Symbolic: Tyson very rightly points out that “in entering the

Symbolic Order— the world of language— we’re entering a world

o f loss and lack”30. It is not therefore surprising then, that

according to Lacan the Symbolic Order marks the replacement o f

the mother with the Name-of-the Father. For it is through language

that we are socially programmed, that we learn the rules and

prohibitions o f our society, and those rules and prohibitions were

and still are authored by the Father, that is, by men in authority past

and present”31.

Tyson adds further:

Our d esires , b e lie fs , b iases, and so forth are con stru cted for us as a result

o f our im m ersion in the S y m b o lic Order, e sp e c ia lly as that im m ersion

is carried out by our parents and in flu en ced by their o w n resp o n ses to

29 It w on ’t be out o f place to say that Freud’s Identification o f p lea su re as a central

motivation in human behaviour has been developed in psychoanalytical and

linguistic literary theory together with the concept o f desire. Freud

considered pleasure or the pleasure prin cip le as central to human

development: the desire for physical or sexual gratification and then the

control or repression o f these desires in the child’s recognition o f the reality

p rin c ip le are fundamental to the formation o f the human psyche whereby

instinctual drives are controlled largely through a process o f socialization.

30 Lois Tyson. 2006, p. 30.

31 Ib id p. 31.

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the S y m b o lic Order. T h is is what Lacan m ean s by h is c la im that

“d esire is a lw a y s the d esire o f the other” .32

However, we desire what we are taught to desire. In other

words, the Symbolic Order consists o f society’s ideologies: its

beliefs, values, and biases; its system o f government, laws,

educational practices, religious tenets, and the like. And it is our

responses to our society’s ideologies that make us what / who we

are. That is what Lacan means when he capitalizes the word Other

while discussing the symbolic order. Other refers to anything that

contributes to the creation o f our subjectivity, or what we

commonly refer to as our “selfhood” . The Symbolic Order

dominates human culture and social order, for to remain solely in

the Imaginary Order is to render one incapable o f functioning in

the society.

The symbolic order, or the world known through language,

ushers in the world o f lack. Hence, the Symbolic order, as a result

o f the experience of lack, marks the split into conscious and

unconscious mind. It is repression that first creates the

unconscious. Indeed, Lacan’s famous statement that “the

32 See, Seminar, Bk. XI, p.235

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unconscious is structured like a language”13 implies among other

things, “the way in which unconscious desire is always seeking our

lost object o f desire, the fantasy mother o f our preverbal

experience, just as language is always seeking ways to put into

words the world o f objects we inhabit as adults that didn’t need

words when we felt as preverbal infants, one with them”34. It is

only in the absence o f a desired object that language becomes

necessary, and through the use o f language that a self comes into

existence. The form o f that existence is both desiring and

linguistic.

The Symbolic and the Imaginary are overlapping, as there is

no clear marker or division between the two. In fact, in some

respects they always coexist because the Symbolic order is the

structure o f language itself and we have to enter into it in order to

emerge as speaking subjects, and to designate ourseives by “ I.” The

foundation for having a self lies in the Imaginary projection o f the

self onto the specular image; the other in the mirror and having a

self is expressed in saying “I,” which can only occur within the

Symbolic. The Imaginary is structured by the Symbolic order: in

Jacques Lacan. The Sem inar o f Jacques Lacan, Book VI!. The Ethics o f

Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960. ed. J. A. Miller, trans. D. Portei, London:

Routledge, 1992. p. 12.

34 Lois Tyson. 2006, p.30.

The Four Fundamental Concepts oj Psychoanalysis, Lacan argues

how the visual field is structured by symbolic laws. Thus, the

Imaginary involves a linguistic dimension. If the signifier is the

foundation o f the Symbolic, the signified and signification are part

o f the Imaginary order. Language has Symbolic and Imaginary

connotations; in its Imaginary aspect, language is itself the “wall o f

language” which inverts and distorts the discourse o f the Other. On

the other hand, the Imaginary is rooted in the subject’s relationship

with its own body (the image of the body). In Fetishism: the

Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real, Lacan argues that in the

sexual plane the Imaginary appears as sexual display and courtship

love. He accuses major psychoanalytic schools o f reducing the

practice o f psychoanalysis to the Imaginary order by making

identification with the analyst the objective o f analysis.35 He

proposes the use o f the Symbolic as the way to dislodge the

disabling fixations o f the Imaginary: the analyst transforms the

images into words.

In his Seminar IV, “La relation d ’objet”, Lacan asserts that

the concepts o f Law and Structure are unthinkable without

35 See, “The Directions o f the Treatment", Jacques Lacan. Ecrits: A Selection, trans.

Alan Sheridan, London: Routledge, 2001.

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language: thus the Symbolic is a linguistic dimension. Yet, he does

not simply equate this order with language since language involves

the Imaginary and the Real as well36. The dimension proper of

language in the Symbolic is that o f the signifier, that is a dimension

in which elements have no positive existence but which are

constituted by virtue o f their mutual differences.The Symbolic is

also the field o f radical alterity, that is the Other: the unconscious is

the discourse o f this Other. Besides, it is the realm o f the Law

which regulates desire in the Oedipus complex.

Lacan even questions Saussure’s assumption37 that there is

nothing problematic about the bond between the signified and the

signifier in the verbal sign by pointing out that the two signifiers,

‘Ladies’ and ‘Gentlemen’ may refer to the same signified (a WC),

or be interpreted in a certain context as apparently contradictory

place names. In short, language, the signifying chain, has a life o f

’6 Lacan’s theories o f language and the unconscious are formulated in a widely known

paper called “The A gency/ Insistence o f the Letter in the Unconscious since

Freud” (1954). In the first part of this paper, entitled “The M eaning o f the

Letter”, Lacan urges that Psychoanalysis “discovers in the unconscious ... the

w hole structure o f language” (E crits , 147). Language its structure exist prior

to the moment at which the speaking subject makes his entry into it (E crits ,

148). Lacan talks o f the subject as "the slave o f language”, w hose place is

already “ inscribed at birth" (E crits, 148).

’7 “Jacques Lacan”, in D avid L odge with N ig e l W o o d (ed) Modern Criticism and Theory: A

Reader, D or l in g K indersley (India) Pvt. Ltd., 2 0 0 7 .

73

its own which cannot be securely anchored to a world o f things.

‘There is a perpetual sliding of the signified ‘under the signifier’.

No meaning is sustained by anything other than reference to

another meaning’. Such dicta were to have major repercussions on

the theory and practice o f interpretation.

The Real Order: Lacan traces the origin o f the Real in Aristotle’s

‘Tuche’ which means ‘search for cause’. According to Lacan the

‘real’ is a state in which an individual is free from all desires and

demands as he /she is hardly affected by the worldly attractions. In

other words, this phase is a liberalized state which can’t be

confined to any linguistic domain, as it is pre-linguistic. It is a

place beyond language, and hence unrepresentable in language.

The Real entiated elements, signifiers, the Real in itself is

undifferentiated, it bears no fissure. The Symbolic introduces “a

cut in the real”, in the process o f signification: “it is the world of

words that creates the world o f things— things originally confused

in the “here and now” o f the all in the process o f coming into

being.

Thus, the Real is that which is outside language, resisting

symbolization absolutely. In Seminar XI, Lacan defines the Real as

“the impossible” because it is impossible to imagine and

impossible to integrate into the Symbolic, being impossibly

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attainable. It is this resistance to symbolization that lends the Real

its traumatic quality.

Lacanian concept o f the ‘Real’ is certainly a difficult concept

and as such beyond the comprehension o f meaning o f an average

reader because it lies almost outside the world created by

ideologies, which our societies generally use in order to explain

‘existence’. According to Tyson:

O ne w a y to th ink o f the R eal is as that w h ich is b ey o n d all m ea n in g —

m ak in g sy stem s that w h ich lie ou tsid e the w orld created by the

id e o lo g ie s so c ie ty u ses to exp la in e x is te n c e .38

It is the uninterpretable dimension o f existence; an existence

without the filters and buffers o f our signifying or meaning-making

systems. It is the experience o f an individual, may be even only for

a moment, to feel that there is no purpose or meaning in life; and

religions as well as other rules that govern society are hoaxes or

mistakes or the mere results o f chance.

In other words, it is a realization that ‘ideology’ is not a set

o f timeless values or eternal truths but only a curtain that is

embroidered and makes everything bleak. The ‘existence’ behind

the curtain is the Real, but it is beyond the competence o f every

individual to see or experience the truth o f reality which Lacan

38 Lois Tyson. 2006, P. 32.

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calls the trauma o f the Real. According to him, it gives us only the

realization that the reality, hidden beneath the ideologies society

has created, is beyond our capacity to control:

T he traum a o f the Real g iv e s us on ly the rea liza tion that the reality

hidden beneath the id e o lo g ie s so c ie ty has created is a reality beyon d

our ca p a city to k n o w and exp la in and therefore certa in ly b ey o n d our

cap acity to co n tro l39.

For Lacan, the real is impossible: that which occurs beyond

the entire framework o f signification. The real is a sign o f its own

absence, pointing to itself as merely signifier. Not only opposed to

the Imaginary, the Real is also located outside the Symbolic.

Unlike the latter which is constituted in terms o f oppositions, i.e.

presence/absence, “there is no absence in the Real.” Whereas the

Symbolic opposition presence/absence implies the possibility that

something may be missing from the Symbolic, “the Real is always

in its place” .

Lacanian concept o f the Mirror Phase, the Imaginary, the

Symbolic, and the Real imply that an individual’s sense of

individuation can in no way develop merely due to ones ‘inner

wealth’ or ‘innate potential’. The mirror phase marks the point at

which this comforting imaginary condition breaks down, pushing

39 Ibid.

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the child into the symbolic order, which is the world o f predefined

social roles and gender differences, the world o f subjects and

objects, the world o f language. This is why Lacan calls it the phase

of demand and the mirror stage or the realm of the Imaginary. For

Lacan, it is a condition in which: we lack any defined centre o f

identity. Lacan believes that ego or self or identity is always on

some level a Fantasy, identification with an external image, and not

an internal sense o f separate whole identity. In fact, the image the

child sees in the mirror is in this sense an alienated one: the child

misrecognizes itself in it, finds in the image a pleasing unity which

does not actually experience in its own body. Hence, the imaginary

for Lacan, is precisely this realm o f images in which we make

identifications but in the very act o f doing so we are led to

misperceive and misrecognise ourselves. As the child grows up, it

continues to make such imaginary identifications with objects, and

this is how its ego is built up.

For Lacan, the ego is just the narcissistic process whereby

we bolster up a fictive sense o f unitary selfhood by finding

something in the world with which we can identify ‘se lf . Lacan’s

theory teaches that our ability to gain definite access to the essence

o f things is possible only through language. Being humans, we are

trapped within the universe of discourse, and it is impossible to

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conceive or articulate or express whatever is outside without

articulating it within the discursive field in one of its forms like

desire. It is now evident that meaning is constantly shifting despite

the fact that language always carries meaning; it is incapable of

fixating it. As human beings, it is always our desire to articulate

our demands in a well-formed language but our desires never get

materialized because o f the slippery nature o f language which

makes us persistently conscious of our ‘lack’ or ‘failure’ to

communicate. We continuously search for this lost-impossible real

but the search ends in failure because our attempts prove

meaningless, futile for neutralizing this lack. In this way, Lacanian

theory is but another version of social constructionism.

According to Lois Tyson40 the most reliable way to interpret a

literary work through a Lacanian lens is to explore the ways in

which the text might be structured by some o f the Lacanian

concepts and see what this exploration can reveal. Such an

exploration shall focus on the following:

> Do any characters, events, or episodes in the narrative seem

to embody the Imaginary Order, in which case they would

involve some kind o f private and either fantasy or delusional

world?

40 Ibid, p. 33.

78

> What parts o f the text seem formed by the Symbolic Order?

That is, where do we see ideology and social norms in

control o f characters’ behaviour and narrative events?

> Does any part o f the text seem to operate as a representative

o f the Real, o f that dimension o f existence that remains so

terrifyingly beyond our ability to comprehend it that our

impulse is to flee it, to repress and deny it?

Taking a clue from Lois Tyson, it is worthwhile to analyse

the major novels o f R.K. Narayan from ‘Lacanian lens’ or

‘Lacanian Perspective’ in order to explore those dimensions of

his creative genius which have so far remained unexplored.

79