Jacques Emile Marie Lacan (1901-1981) was a Parisian psychoanalyst who combined the early 20th century structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure with the texts of Sigmund Freud to reconceptualize French psychoanalysis. Some English-speaking mental health professionals have never heard of Lacan and many have found him to be incomprehensible. This article is an attempt to at least partially correct this state of affairs.
Lacan’s paradigm of our experience of reality is deceptively simple. He divided it into 3 registers: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.1 He later added a 4th register shortly before his death, Le Sinthome. He applied his registers to the psychoanalytic diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric suffering.2 He believed that his ideas better captured Freud’s intentions than other post-Freudians. He has been labeled “The French Freud” and he called his life’s work “A Return to Freud.” 3,4
Lacan’s critics would suggest that “the Emperor has no clothes,” ie, that there is nothing of value to Lacan’s ideas. However, it is my contention that his critics are not wearing the right pair of eyeglasses allowing them to see that this Emperor’s clothes are “hiding in plain sight.”
The Mirror Stage and The Imaginary Register
Lacan postulated that the infant’s internal experience of itself initially is a hodgepodge of disconnected body parts (fingers, toes, nose, ears, etc) and bodily sensations. He hypothesized that, between 6 and 18 months the baby identifies with the image it sees of itself in a mirror, and he called this the mirror stage in the infant’s life. This “mirror” that contributes to the formation of the infant’s identity can also be its mother’s gaze as well as other small children.
Lacan called the infant’s integrated and whole image of itself in the mirror a false identification, contrasting it with the true identification of its unintegrated internal experience. Breaking with Freud, Lacan labeled this false identification of the child with its image in the mirror the Ego and he stated that the infant becomes alienated from its true internal experience. He called the child’s wish to be whole and complete like the image in the mirror, the Ideal Ego.
Lacan labeled the infant’s experience of seeing itself in the mirror the imaginary register of existence. The imaginary register is the register of sensory experience and includes the other senses that are also outside of and do not require language. When we view a painting, gaze at nature, or look up at the night sky, we are viewing scenes of infinite complexity and that are whole and complete without gaps or discontinuity. This is characteristic of the imaginary register.
The imaginary register is responsible for making visual comparisons with others, evoking feelings of envy and jealousy, for aspects of paranoia, and for eliciting romantic infatuation. Regarding romantic infatuation, Lacan would say that it is not the other person to whom we are attracted, but instead to the attributes of the other person¾their flaming red hair, that sparkle in their eye, the way they walk, or the sports car they drive. When we encounter unknown persons for the first time, we compare ourselves with the image of that person and, unknowingly, imagine that they are mostly similar to us. It is only when we begin to speak to the other person that we learn otherwise.
Lacan famously said: “Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel,” “There is no sexual relation.” What did he mean by this? Certainly, people have sex with one another, and they relate to one another sexually. Lacan is countering the common fantasy that 2 individuals become 1 when they are in an intimate relationship with one another.
In ancient Greek mythology, human beings were initially singular globular figures consisting of 2 persons facing away from each other, each with a set of genitals, male and female (in all possible combinations). Later, the gods divided these globular figures in half, and the 2 halves have forever been seeking their missing part, in an effort to become one again.
Language and The Symbolic Register
We are all born into language and, as babies, we are tasked with learning a foreign language, our mother tongue. Once the infant begins to develop a rudimentary vocabulary, the infant becomes severed from the prelinguistic world of nature that it formerly inhabited. This separation from the preexisting natural world is a second way in which the infant becomes alienated from its former self.
Language is an abstract structure consisting of words expressed by speech, writing, or gestures to communicate or convey meaning. Lacan called this linguistic aspect of human experience¾composed of symbols (letters and words)¾the most important component of the symbolic register. The symbolic register includes the entire social world into which we are born: language, laws, rituals, customs, and religion. It exists outside of ourselves, waiting for us before we are born. We internalize it and make it part of who we are soon after we are born. Lacan also referred to the symbolic register as the Big (O)ther, in contrast to little (o)thers—other people.
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) divided the spoken or written word into 2 parts. The signifier is the word that we hear when spoken (or see written as text) and the signified is the concept that the spoken word evokes in the listener. A signifier may be associated with a multitude of signifieds. For example, the spoken word (signifier) “chair” has multiple possible associations (signifieds): (1) a seat for 1 person, typically with a back and 4 legs; (2) the person in charge of a meeting; (3) a professorship; (4) a metal socket holding a railroad rail in place; and (5) a particular seat in an orchestra, eg “first chair violin.”
Following Saussure, Lacan reimagined the Freudian unconscious as consisting of chains of repressed Signifiers that relate to one another through metaphor (whereby 2 otherwise unrelated things are compared to one another) and metonymy (whereby one term is used to refer to a closely related term). Signifiers in a sentence only generate meaning in relation to other signifiers. To quote Lacan: “A Signifier is that which represents a subject for another Signifier.”
Each word/signifier in a sentence can be “defined,” but it only has meaning in the context of its relationship to the rest of the sentence. The unconscious for Lacan consists entirely of chains of repressed signifiers, and because these signifiers relate to one another through metaphor and metonymy, Lacan famously said: “The unconscious is structured like a language.”
When we speak, the listener can never know what the final meaning of the sentence will be until the last word has been spoken or written. This is readily evident by examining this sentence. The first word, “This,” could be followed by multitude of other words. “This is” narrows it down slightly, but not by much. And so on, until the last work of the sentence has been written. This has important implications for psychotherapy, since the therapist must patiently listen to all the words of the patients’ sentence to know its meaning. This idea is profoundly important if the therapist is to get closest to their patient’s unconscious thoughts. Here again, the Emperor is fully dressed (the patient can be more easily understood) if the viewer is wearing the correct pair of lenses (adapting Lacan’s concepts).
Since the unconscious for Lacan consists entirely of repressed signifiers, in line with Freud it mostly expresses itself through slips of the tongue, bungled actions, psychogenic forgetting, psychiatric symptoms based on unconscious conflict, and character deformations. Therefore, the Lacanian therapist pays more attention to the words of their patient than to what the patient meant to say. What the patient meant to say is spoken by the patient’s ego, a false identification that always wants to be seen in the best possible light.
The Real Register—Hiding Out-of-Sight
The real register is what is left over from the imaginary and symbolic registers. It consists of all that we cannot see and what we do not know. Lacan characterized the real as the state of nature from which we have been forever severed by our entrance into language. Whatever we say, there is much that is left unsaid. Whatever we see, there is always more that we do not see. When a scientist makes a discovery, there is always more yet to be discovered. When we look at a painting, our attention is drawn to parts of the painting, but there is always much that we miss. This is why we rely on docents in art museums to help us make shortcuts in the real. For Lacan, the real resists symbolization (cannot be represented or accessed through language) and is the realm of the impossible, the traumatic, the unrepresentable, the prelinguistic, and is the source of fundamental lack.
Paradoxically, the real is the existence of all that does not exist. It is strongly tied to Lacan’s concept of desire. We all have physiological needs to survive¾for air, water, food, ambient temperature…and for love. We all have wishes for things we would like to have—desired objects, travel destinations, career goals, social aspirations. Demands are the vocal expressions of needs and wishes. For the infant, as for the adult, demands are always only temporarily satisfied. One demand is quickly replaced by another.
What drives our desire for needs and wishes? I Googled “Lacan and Desire” and Artificial Intelligence (AI) provided the following explanation: Desire, according to Jacques Lacan, “is a product of the interplay between the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. Desire arises from the gap between the Real (what is inherently lacking), and the Symbolic (what can be represented through language). It is not a direct experience of the Real, but rather a response to the lack that the Real introduces. It is a longing for something beyond what can be symbolized or processed. It’s the drive to fill the fundamental lack that the Real introduces. It is a perpetual striving, a constant search for something that can never be fully attained because it’s rooted in the fundamental lack of the Real.” I could not have expressed this better myself.
Dr Perman is clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC, and a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Creighton University Medical School in Omaha, Nebraska.
References
1. Perman, GP. Jacques Lacan: the best and least known psychoanalyst. Psychiatric Times. December 19, 2018. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/jacques-lacan-best-and-least-known-psychoanalyst
2. Perman, GP. Jacques Lacan: The Psychoanalyst of Lac(k), Psychiatric Times. February 16, 2024. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/jacques-lacan-the-psychoanalyst-of-lac-k
3. Leader D, Groves J. Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide. Amberley Publishing; 2010.
4. Neill C. Jacques Lacan: The Basics. Routledge; 2023.