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170-596: The condition and quality of Otherness (the characteristics of the Other) is the state of being different from and alien to the social identity of a person and to the identity of the Self . In the discourse of philosophy, the term Otherness identifies and refers to the characteristics of Who? and What? of the Other, which are distinct and separate from the Symbolic order of things; from

340-564: A "self-regulatory structure" that provides meaning, direction, and a sense of self-control. It fosters internal harmony and serves as a behavioral compass, enabling individuals to orient themselves towards the future and establish long-term goals. As an active process, it profoundly influences an individual's capacity to adapt to life events and achieve a state of well-being. However, identity originates from traits or attributes that individuals may have little or no control over, such as their family background or ethnicity. In sociology , emphasis

510-406: A , so he can situate himself in the place of Other, and not the other". Dylan Evans explains that: For Lacan "the Other must first of all be considered a locus in which speech is constituted," so that the other as another subject is secondary to the other as symbolic order. We can speak of the other as a subject in a secondary sense only when a subject occupies this position and thereby embodies

680-400: A Dominator–Dominated binary relationship, postmodern philosophy presents the Other and Otherness as phenomenological and ontological progress for Man and Society. Public knowledge of the social identity of peoples classified as "Outsiders" is de facto acknowledgement of their being real , thus they are part of the body politic , especially in the cities. As such, "the post-modern city

850-636: A base for weekend retreats for work, leisure—including extravagant social occasions—and for the accommodation of his vast library. His art collection included Courbet 's L'Origine du monde , which he had concealed in his study by a removable wooden screen on which an abstract representation of the Courbet by the artist André Masson was portrayed. In 1951, Lacan started to hold a private weekly seminar in Paris in which he inaugurated what he described as "a return to Freud," whose doctrines were to be re-articulated through

1020-537: A being of pure, abstract alterity) leads to ignoring the commonality of truth . Likewise, problems arise from unethical usages of the terms The Other, Otherness, and Othering to reinforce ontological divisions of reality: of being , of becoming , and of existence . In Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1961), Emmanuel Lévinas said that previous philosophy had reduced the constitutive Other to an object of consciousness, by not preserving its absolute alterity —the innate condition of otherness, by which

1190-508: A category of practice and as a category of analysis. Indeed, many scholars demonstrate a tendency to follow their own preconceptions of identity, following more or less the frameworks listed above, rather than taking into account the mechanisms by which the concept is crystallised as reality. In this environment, some analysts, such as Brubaker and Cooper, have suggested doing away with the concept completely. Others, by contrast, have sought to introduce alternative concepts in an attempt to capture

1360-527: A city by creating social spaces that use the spatial and temporal plans of the city to allow the LGBT communities free expression of their social identities , e.g. a boystown , a gay-pride parade , etc.; as such, queering urban spaces is a political means for the non-binary sexual Other to establish themselves as citizens integral to the reality (cultural and socio-economic) of their city's body politic . The philosopher of feminism , Cheshire Calhoun identified

1530-660: A collective group as a fixed thing, defined by objective criteria such as common ancestry and common biological characteristics . The second, rooted in social constructionist theory, takes the view that identity is formed by a predominantly political choice of certain characteristics. In so doing, it questions the idea that identity is a natural given, characterised by fixed, supposedly objective criteria. Both approaches need to be understood in their respective political and historical contexts, characterised by debate on issues of class, race and ethnicity . While they have been criticized, they continue to exert an influence on approaches to

1700-400: A colony, Othering a non-white people allowed the colonisers to physically subdue and "civilise" the natives to establish the hierarchies of domination (political and social) required for exploiting the subordinated natives and their country. As a function of empire, a settler colony is an economic means for profitably disposing of two demographic groups: (i) the colonists (surplus population of

1870-605: A consistent aspect throughout different stages of life. Identity is shaped by social and cultural factors and how others perceive and acknowledge one's characteristics. The etymology of the term "identity" from the Latin noun identitas emphasizes an individual's mental image of themselves and their "sameness with others". Identity encompasses various aspects such as occupational, religious , national, ethnic or racial, gender , educational, generational, and political identities, among others. Identity serves multiple functions, acting as

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2040-442: A crisis if they become unable to perform their chosen work. Therefore, occupational identity necessitates an active and adaptable process that ensures both adaptation and continuity amid shifting circumstances. The modern notion of personal identity as a distinct and unique characteristic of individuals has evolved relatively recently in history beginning with the first passports in the early 1900s and later becoming more popular as

2210-627: A different path, but by 1924 his parents had moved to Boulogne and he was living in rooms in Montmartre . During the early 1920s, Lacan actively engaged with the Parisian literary and artistic avant-garde . Having met James Joyce , he was present at the Parisian bookshop where the first readings of passages from Ulysses in French and English took place, shortly before it was published in 1922. He also had meetings with Charles Maurras , whom he admired as

2380-504: A five-week study trip, where he met the British analysts Ernest Jones , Wilfred Bion and John Rickman. Bion's analytic work with groups influenced Lacan, contributing to his own subsequent emphasis on study groups as a structure within which to advance theoretical work in psychoanalysis. He published a report of his visit as 'La Psychiatrique anglaise et la guerre' ( Evolution psychiatrique 1, 1947, pp.  293–318). In 1949, Lacan presented

2550-519: A function of imperial ideology, Orientalism fetishizes people and things in three actions of cultural imperialism : (i) Homogenization (all Oriental peoples are one folk); (ii) Feminization (the Oriental always is subordinate in the East–West relation); and (iii) Essentialization (a people possess universal characteristics); thus established by Othering, the empire's cultural hegemony reduces to inferiority

2720-417: A key-point for the explanation of the genesis of fetishism ". Nevertheless, "Lacan systematically questioned those psychoanalytic developments from the 1930s to the 1970s, which were increasingly and almost exclusively focused on the child's early relations with the mother... the pre-Oedipal or Kleinian mother"; and Lacan's rereading of Freud—"characteristically, Lacan insists that his return to Freud supplies

2890-485: A literary stylist, and he occasionally attended meetings of Action Française (of which Maurras was a leading ideologue), of which he would later be highly critical. In 1920, after being rejected for military service on the grounds that he was too thin, Lacan entered medical school. Between 1927 and 1931, after completing his studies at the faculty of medicine of the University of Paris , he specialised in psychiatry under

3060-425: A loosely Eriksonian way properties based on the uniqueness and individuality which makes a person distinct from others. Identity became of more interest to anthropologists with the emergence of modern concerns with ethnicity and social movements in the 1970s. This was reinforced by an appreciation, following the trend in sociological thought, of the manner in which the individual is affected by and contributes to

3230-469: A male-dominated culture that represents Woman as the sexual Other to Man. In a patriarchal culture, the Man–Woman relation is society's normative binary-gender relation, wherein the sexual Other is a social minority with the least socio-political agency , usually the women of the community, because patriarchal semantics established that "a man represents both the positive and the neutral, as indicated by

3400-535: A minute. Freud very clearly opposes the unconscious (which he says is constituted by thing-presentations and nothing else) to the pre-conscious. What is related to language can only belong to the pre-conscious". Freud certainly contrasted "the presentation of the word and the presentation of the thing ... the unconscious presentation is the presentation of the thing alone" in his metapsychology. Dylan Evans, however, in his Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, "... takes issue with those who, like André Green, question

3570-699: A new paper on the mirror stage , 'The Mirror-Stage, as Formative of the I, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience', to the sixteenth IPA congress in Zurich. The same year he set out in the Doctrine de la Commission de l'Enseignement, produced for the Training Commission of the SPP, the protocols for the training of candidates. With the purchase in 1951 of a country mansion at Guitrancourt , Lacan established

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3740-402: A notion of Us-versus-Them is, in effect, to pretend that the principal consideration is epistemological and natural—our civilization is known and accepted, theirs is different and strange—whereas, in fact, the framework separating us from them is belligerent, constructed, and situational. The contemporary, post-colonial world system of nation-states (with interdependent politics and economies)

3910-443: A person or a social group from mainstream society to the social margins—for being essentially different from the societal norm (the plural Self)—is a socio-economic function of gender. In a society wherein man–woman heterosexuality is the sexual norm, the Other refers to and identifies lesbians (women who love women) and gays (men who love men) as people of same-sex orientation whom society has othered as "sexually deviant" from

4080-405: A positive self-concept becomes more arduous when societal standards label their work as "dirty" or undesirable. Consequently, some individuals opt not to define themselves solely by their occupation but strive for a holistic identity that encompasses all aspects of their lives, beyond their job or work. On the other hand, individuals whose identity strongly hinges on their occupation may experience

4250-418: A reading of Saussure 's linguistics and Levi-Strauss 's structuralist anthropology. Becoming public in 1953, Lacan's 27-year-long seminar was highly influential in Parisian cultural life, as well as in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. In January 1953 Lacan was elected president of the SPP. When, at a meeting the following June, a formal motion was passed against him criticising his abandonment of

4420-551: A sharp line between the actions of some of his followers and his own style of "revolt." In 1969, Lacan moved his public seminars to the Faculté de Droit (Panthéon) , where he continued to deliver his expositions of analytic theory and practice until the dissolution of his school in 1980. Throughout the final decade of his life, Lacan continued his widely followed seminars. During this period, he developed his concepts of masculine and feminine jouissance and placed an increased emphasis on

4590-550: A social science term in the 1950s. Several factors have influenced its evolution, including: Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan ( UK : / l æ ˈ k ɒ̃ / , US : / l ə ˈ k ɑː n / lə- KAHN ; French: [ʒak maʁi emil lakɑ̃] ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist . Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud ", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in

4760-451: A subsequent two-volume edition in 1969. By the 1960s, Lacan was associated, at least in the public mind, with the far left in France. In May 1968, Lacan voiced his sympathy for the student protests and as a corollary his followers set up a Department of Psychology at the University of Vincennes (Paris VIII) . However, Lacan's unequivocal comments in 1971 on revolutionary ideals in politics draw

4930-536: A threat to the active process and continued development of identity. Feeling socially unproductive can have detrimental effects on one's social identity . Importantly, the relationship between occupation and identity is bidirectional; occupation contributes to the formation of identity, while identity shapes decisions regarding occupational choices. Furthermore, individuals inherently seek a sense of control over their chosen occupation and strive to avoid stigmatizing labels that may undermine their occupational identity. In

5100-657: A time, he served as Picasso's personal therapist. He attended the mouvement Psyché that Maryse Choisy founded and published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure . "[Lacan's] interest in surrealism predated his interest in psychoanalysis," former Lacanian analyst and biographer Dylan Evans explains, speculating that "perhaps Lacan never really abandoned his early surrealist sympathies, its neo-Romantic view of madness as 'convulsive beauty', its celebration of irrationality." Translator and historian David Macey writes that "the importance of surrealism can hardly be over-stated... to

5270-485: A totality of attributes including beliefs about one's characteristics including life history), and the personal characteristics displayed to others. At a general level, self-psychology explores the question of how the personal self relates to the social environment. Theories in "psychological" social psychology explain an individual's actions in a group in terms of mental events and states. However, some "sociological" social psychology theories go further by dealing with

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5440-428: A twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body-image". As this concept developed further, the stress fell less on its historical value and more on its structural value. In his fourth seminar, "La relation d'objet," Lacan states that "the mirror stage

5610-422: A useful means of understanding gender biases and imposed roles, while others, most notably Luce Irigaray , accuse Lacan of maintaining the sexist tradition in psychoanalysis. For Irigaray, the phallus does not define a single axis of gender by its presence or absence; instead, gender has two positive poles. Like Irigaray, French philosopher Jacques Derrida , in criticizing Lacan's concept of castration, discusses

5780-611: Is a geographical celebration of difference that moves sites once conceived of as 'marginal' to the [social] centre of discussion and analysis" of the human relations between the Outsiders and the Establishment. Identity (social science) Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterize a person or a group . Identity emerges during childhood as children start to comprehend their self-concept , and it remains

5950-403: Is a kind of virtual site in which the dynamic processes and markers used for identification are made apparent, boundaries provide the framework on which this virtual site is built. They concentrated on how the idea of community belonging is differently constructed by individual members and how individuals within the group conceive ethnic boundaries. As a non-directive and flexible analytical tool,

6120-527: Is a school of interpretation whose material happens to be the Orient, its civilisations, peoples, and localities. Its objective discoveries – the work of innumerable devoted scholars who edited texts and translated them, codified grammars, wrote dictionaries, reconstructed dead epochs, produced positivistically verifiable learning – are and always have been conditioned by the fact that its truths, like any truths delivered by language, are embodied in language, and, what

6290-468: Is achieved by personal choices regarding who and what to associate with. Such approaches are liberating in their recognition of the role of the individual in social interaction and the construction of identity. Anthropologists have contributed to the debate by shifting the focus of research: One of the first challenges for the researcher wishing to carry out empirical research in this area is to identify an appropriate analytical tool. The concept of boundaries

6460-416: Is far from a mere phenomenon which occurs in the development of the child. It illustrates the conflictual nature of the dual relationship. " The mirror stage describes the formation of the ego via the process of objectification, the ego being the result of a conflict between one's perceived visual appearance and one's emotional experience. This identification is what Lacan called "alienation". At six months,

6630-423: Is interpreted as the norm, as it is unrealistic to expect an individual to resolve all their conflicted identifications with others; therefore we should be alert to individuals with levels which are much higher or lower than the norm – highly diffused individuals are classified as diffused, and those with low levels as foreclosed or defensive. Weinreich applies the identity variant in a framework which also allows for

6800-457: Is not male. In feminist definition, women are the Other to men (but not the Other proposed by Hegel) and are not existentially defined by masculine demands; and also are the social Other who unknowingly accepts social subjugation as part of subjectivity , because the gender identity of woman is constitutionally different from the gender identity of man. The harm of Othering is in the asymmetric nature of unequal roles in sexual and gender relations;

6970-422: Is placed by sociologists on collective identity , in which an individual's identity is strongly associated with role-behavior or the collection of group memberships that define them. According to Peter Burke, "Identities tell us who we are and they announce to others who we are." Identities subsequently guide behavior, leading "fathers" to behave like "fathers" and "nurses" to act like "nurses". In psychology ,

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7140-448: Is possible that people who do understand the newcomer but who also speak another language may not want to speak the newcomer's language and so see their marker as an imposition and a negative boundary. It is possible that the newcomer is either aware or unaware of this, depending on whether they themself knows other languages or is conscious of the plurilingual quality of the people there and is respectful of it or not. A religious identity

7310-547: Is possible to question the insufficiencies of science and philosophy. Starting in 1962, a complex negotiation took place to determine the status of the SFP within the IPA. Lacan's practice (with its controversial indeterminate-length sessions) and his critical stance towards psychoanalytic orthodoxy led, in August 1963, to the IPA setting the condition that registration of the SFP was dependent upon

7480-411: Is related to the notion that there are certain identity formation strategies which a person may use to adapt to the social world. Cote and Levine developed a typology which investigated the different manners of behavior that individuals may have. Their typology includes: Kenneth Gergen formulated additional classifications, which include the strategic manipulator , the pastiche personality , and

7650-432: Is the set of beliefs and practices generally held by an individual, involving adherence to codified beliefs and rituals and study of ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, mythology, and faith and mystical experience. Religious identity refers to the personal practices related to communal faith along with rituals and communication stemming from such conviction. This identity formation begins with an association in

7820-410: Is the truth of language?, Nietzsche once said, but "a mobile army of metaphors , metonyms , and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which, after long use, seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are." In so far as

7990-423: Is to lay bare the nature of the divine response to the recovery of the lost, with the lost sheep representing a lost human being. Christian meditation is a specific form of personality formation, though often used only by certain practitioners to describe various forms of prayer and the process of knowing the contemplation of God. In Western culture , personal and secular identity are deeply influenced by

8160-438: Is useful here for demonstrating how identity works. In the same way as Barth, in his approach to ethnicity, advocated the critical focus for investigation as being "the ethnic boundary that defines the group rather than the cultural stuff that it encloses", social anthropologists such as Cohen and Bray have shifted the focus of analytical study from identity to the boundaries that are used for purposes of identification. If identity

8330-478: Is when a person avoids or refuses both exploration and making a commitment. Foreclosure occurs when a person does make a commitment to a particular identity but neglected to explore other options. Identity moratorium is when a person avoids or postpones making a commitment but is still actively exploring their options and different identities. Lastly, identity achievement is when a person has both explored many possibilities and has committed to their identity. Although

8500-589: The Revue française de psychanalyse  [ fr ] . In Autumn 1932, Lacan began his training analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein , which was to last until 1938. In 1934 Lacan became a candidate member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP). He began his private psychoanalytic practice in 1936 whilst still seeing patients at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, and the same year presented his first analytic report at

8670-548: The International Psychoanalytic Association . In consequence, Lacan went on to establish new psychoanalytic institutions to promote and develop his work, which he declared to be a "return to Freud", in opposition to prevalent trends in psychology and institutional psychoanalysis collusive of adaptation to social norms. Lacan was born in Paris , the eldest of Émilie and Alfred Lacan's three children. His father

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8840-593: The Self requires the existence of the constitutive Other as the counterpart entity required for defining the Self . Accordingly, in the late 18th century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) introduced the concept of the Other as a constituent part of self-consciousness (preoccupation with the Self), which complemented the propositions about self-awareness (capacity for introspection) proffered by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814). John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) introduced

9010-686: The apartheid-era cultural representations of coloured people in South Africa (1948–94). Consequent to the Holocaust (1941–1945), with documents such as The Race Question (1950) and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1963), the United Nations officially declared that racial differences are insignificant to anthropological likeness among human beings. Despite

9180-401: The relational self . The strategic manipulator is a person who begins to regard all senses of identity merely as role-playing exercises, and who gradually becomes alienated from their social self. The pastiche personality abandons all aspirations toward a true or "essential" identity, instead viewing social interactions as opportunities to play out, and hence become, the roles they play. Finally,

9350-810: The social identity tradition . For example, in work relating to social identity theory , it has been shown that merely crafting cognitive distinction between in- and out-groups can lead to subtle effects on people's evaluations of others. Different social situations also compel people to attach themselves to different self-identities which may cause some to feel marginalized, switch between different groups and self-identifications, or reinterpret certain identity components. These different selves lead to constructed images dichotomized between what people want to be (the ideal self) and how others see them (the limited self). Educational background and occupational status and roles significantly influence identity formation in this regard. Another issue of interest in social psychology

9520-474: The École Freudienne de Paris (EFP), taking "many representatives of the third generation with him: among them were Maud and Octave Mannoni , Serge Leclaire ... and Jean Clavreul". With the support of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser , Lacan was appointed lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He started with a seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis in January 1964 in

9690-495: The Caracas Encounter was to be Lacan's final public address. His last texts from the spring of 1981 are brief institutional documents pertaining to the newly formed Freudian Field Institute. Lacan died on 9 September 1981. Lacan's "return to Freud " emphasizes a renewed attention to the original texts of Freud, and included a radical critique of ego psychology , whereas "Lacan's quarrel with Object Relations psychoanalysis"

9860-688: The Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in Marienbad on the " Mirror Phase ". The congress chairman, Ernest Jones , terminated the lecture before its conclusion, since he was unwilling to extend Lacan's stated presentation time. Insulted, Lacan left the congress to witness the Berlin Olympic Games . No copy of the original lecture remains, Lacan having decided not to hand in his text for publication in

10030-512: The Dussane room at the École Normale Supérieure . Lacan began to set forth his own approach to psychoanalysis to an audience of colleagues that had joined him from the SFP. His lectures also attracted many of the École Normale's students. He divided the École Freudienne de Paris into three sections: the section of pure psychoanalysis (training and elaboration of the theory, where members who have been analyzed but have not become analysts can participate);

10200-549: The Orient occurred in the existential awareness of the Western world, as a term, The Orient later accrued many meanings and associations, denotations, and connotations that did not refer to the real peoples, cultures, and geography of the Eastern world, but to Oriental studies , the academic field about the Orient as a word. In the Eastern world, the field of Occidentalism , the investigation programme and academic curriculum of and about

10370-489: The Orient, Edward Saïd said that: the Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning , Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. If this definition of Orientalism seems more political than not, that is simply because I think Orientalism was, itself, a product of certain political forces and activities. Orientalism

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10540-509: The Other (as a metaphor, as a metonym, and as an anthropomorphism) are manifestations of the xenophobia inherent to the European historiographies that defined and labelled non–European peoples as the Other who is not the European Self. Supported by the reductive discourses (academic and commercial, geopolitical and military) of the empire's dominant ideology , the colonialist misrepresentations of

10710-406: The Other (person) being an entirely metaphysical pure-presence . That the Other could be an entity of pure Otherness (of alterity ) personified in a representation created and depicted with language that identifies, describes, and classifies. The conceptual re-formulation of the nature of the Other also included Levinas's analysis of the distinction between " the saying and the said "; nonetheless,

10880-483: The Other as a philosophic concept and as a term within phenomenology ; as a noun, the Other identifies and refers to a person and to a group of persons; as a verb, the Other identifies and refers to a category and a label for persons and things. Post-colonial scholarship demonstrated that, in pursuit of empire, "the colonizing powers narrated an 'Other' whom they set out to save, dominate, control, [and] civilize . . . [in order to] extract resources through colonization" of

11050-574: The Other explain the Eastern world to the Western world as a binary relation of native weakness against colonial strength. In the 19th-century historiographies of the Orient as a cultural region, the Orientalists studied only what they said was the high culture (languages and literatures, arts and philologies) of the Middle East, but did not study that geographic space as a place inhabited by different nations and societies. About that Western version of

11220-401: The Other is constituted as an alter ego , as an other self . As such, the Other person posed and was an epistemological problem—of being only a perception of the consciousness of the Self. In Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (1943), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) applied the dialectic of intersubjectivity to describe how the world is altered by the appearance of

11390-437: The Other radically transcends the Self and the totality of the human network, into which the Other is being placed. As a challenge to self-assurance, the existence of the Other is a matter of ethics, because the ethical priority of the Other equals the primacy of ethics over ontology in real life. From that perspective, Lévinas described the nature of the Other as "insomnia and wakefulness"; an ecstasy (an exteriority) towards

11560-457: The Other that forever remains beyond any attempt at fully capturing the Other, whose Otherness is infinite; even in the murder of an Other, the Otherness of the person remains uncontrolled and not negated. The infinity of the Other allowed Lévinas to derive other aspects of philosophy and science as secondary to that ethic; thus: The others that obsess me in the Other do not affect me as examples of

11730-516: The Other, of how the world then appears to be oriented to the Other person, and not to the Self. The Other appears as a psychological phenomenon in the course of a person's life, and not as a radical threat to the existence of the Self. In that mode, in The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) applied the concept of Otherness to Hegel's dialectic of the " Lord and Bondsman " ( Herrschaft und Knechtschaft , 1807) and found it to be like

11900-497: The Other. In that vein, the language of Otherness used in Oriental Studies perpetuates the cultural perspective of the dominantor–dominated relation, which is characteristic of hegemony ; likewise, the sociologic misrepresentation of the feminine as the sexual Other to man reasserts male privilege as the primary voice in social discourse between women and men. In The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq (2004),

12070-474: The Personality" ("De la Psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité"). Its publication had little immediate impact on French psychoanalysis but it did meet with acclaim amongst Lacan's circle of surrealist writers and artists. In their only recorded instance of direct communication, Lacan sent a copy of his thesis to Sigmund Freud who acknowledged its receipt with a postcard. Lacan's thesis

12240-501: The Real (the authentic and unchangeable); from the æsthetic ( art , beauty , taste ); from political philosophy ; from social norms and social identity ; and from the Self . Therefore, the condition of Otherness is a person's non-conformity to and with the social norms of society; and Otherness is the condition of disenfranchisement (political exclusion), effected either by the State or by

12410-526: The Real , Lacan argues that in the sexual plane the Imaginary appears as sexual display and courtship love. Insofar as identification with the analyst is the objective of analysis, Lacan accused major psychoanalytic schools of reducing the practice of psychoanalysis to the Imaginary order. Instead, Lacan proposes the use of the symbolic to dislodge the disabling fixations of the Imaginary—the analyst transforms

12580-437: The Sainte-Anne Hospital, he held his Seminars and presented case histories of patients. During this period he wrote the texts that are found in the collection Écrits , which was first published in 1966. In his seventh seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" (1959–60), which according to Lewis A. Kirshner "arguably represents the most far-reaching attempt to derive a comprehensive ethical position from psychoanalysis," Lacan defined

12750-465: The United Nations' factual dismissal of racialism , institutional Othering in the United States produces the cultural misrepresentation of political refugees as illegal immigrants (from overseas) and of immigrants as illegal aliens (usually from México). To European people, imperialism (military conquest of non-white people, annexation, and economic integration of their countries to the motherland)

12920-547: The United States. He gave lectures in 1975 at Yale , Columbia and MIT . Lacan's failing health made it difficult for him to meet the demands of the year-long Seminars he had been delivering since the fifties, but his teaching continued into the first year of the eighties. After dissolving his School, the EFP, in January 1980, Lacan travelled to Caracas to found the Freudian Field Institute on 12 July. The Overture to

13090-403: The absolute alterity of the Other is compromised, because the Other person is other than the Self and the group. The logic of alterity (otherness) is especially negative in the realm of human geography , wherein the native Other is denied ethical priority as a person with the right to participate in the geopolitical discourse with an empire who decides the colonial fate of the homeland of

13260-423: The baby still lacks physical co-ordination. The child is able to recognize itself in a mirror prior to the attainment of control over their bodily movements. The child sees its image as a whole and the synthesis of this image produces a sense of contrast with the lack of co-ordination of the body, which is perceived as a fragmented body. The child experiences this contrast initially as a rivalry with its image, because

13430-582: The binary relation of the Orient and the Occident . Orientalism created the artificial existence of the Western Self and the non–western Other. Orientalists rationalised the cultural artifice of a difference of essence between white and non-white peoples to fetishize (identify, classify, subordinate) the peoples and cultures of Asia into "the Oriental Other"—who exists in opposition to the Western Self. As

13600-416: The book Écrits . Transcriptions of his seminars, given between 1954 and 1976, were also published. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism , critical theory , feminist theory and film theory , as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself. Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing

13770-417: The boundaries that define similarities or differences between the marker wearer and the marker perceivers, their effectiveness depends on a shared understanding of their meaning. In a social context, misunderstandings can arise due to a misinterpretation of the significance of specific markers. Equally, an individual can use markers of identity to exert influence on other people without necessarily fulfilling all

13940-415: The child compares its own precarious sense of mastery with the omnipotence of the mother, a depressive reaction may accompany the jubilation. Lacan calls the specular image "orthopaedic," since it leads the child to anticipate the overcoming of its "real specific prematurity of birth." The vision of the body as integrated and contained, in opposition to the child's actual experience of motor incapacity and

14110-475: The common use of [the word] Man to designate human beings in general; whereas [the word] Woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity" from the first sex, from Man. In 1957, Betty Friedan reported that a woman's social identity is formally established by the sexual politics of the Ordinate–Subordinate nature of the Man–Woman sexual relation, the social norm in

14280-486: The concept of " the Real " as a point of impossible contradiction in the " symbolic order ". Lacan continued to draw widely on various disciplines, working closely on classical Chinese literature with François Cheng and on the life and work of James Joyce with Jacques Aubert. The growing success of the Écrits , which was translated (in abridged form) into German and English, led to invitations to lecture in Italy, Japan and

14450-505: The concept of boundaries helps both to map and to define the changeability and mutability that are characteristic of people's experiences of the self in society. While identity is a volatile, flexible and abstract 'thing', its manifestations and the ways in which it is exercised are often open to view. Identity is made evident through the use of markers such as language , dress, behaviour and choice of space, whose effect depends on their recognition by other social beings. Markers help to create

14620-404: The concept of the orders over decades, resulting in inconsistencies in his writings. He eventually added a fourth component, the sinthome. The Imaginary is the field of images and imagination. The main illusions of this order are synthesis, autonomy, duality, and resemblance. Lacan thought that the relationship created within the mirror stage between the ego and the reflected image means that

14790-555: The concepts of exploration and commitment . The central idea is that an individual's sense of identity is determined in large part by the degrees to which a person has made certain explorations and the extent to which they have commitments to those explorations or a particular identity. A person may display either relative weakness or strength in terms of both exploration and commitments. When assigned categories, there were four possible results: identity diffusion, identity foreclosure, identity moratorium, and identity achievement. Diffusion

14960-443: The conceptualisation of identity today. These different explorations of 'identity' demonstrate how difficult a concept it is to pin down. Since identity is a virtual thing, it is impossible to define it empirically. Discussions of identity use the term with different meanings, from fundamental and abiding sameness, to fluidity, contingency, negotiated and so on. Brubaker and Cooper note a tendency in many scholars to confuse identity as

15130-466: The conference proceedings. Lacan's attendance at Kojève 's lectures on Hegel , given between 1933 and 1939, and which focused on the Phenomenology and the master-slave dialectic in particular, was formative for his subsequent work, initially in his formulation of his theory of the mirror phase, for which he was also indebted to the experimental work on child development of Henri Wallon . It

15300-408: The country whose people the colonial power designated as the Other. As facilitated by Orientalist representations of the non–Western Other, colonization —the economic exploitation of a people and their land—is misrepresented as a civilizing mission launched for the material, cultural, and spiritual benefit of the colonized peoples. Counter to the post-colonial perspective of the Other as part of

15470-449: The criteria that an external observer might typically associate with such an abstract identity. Boundaries can be inclusive or exclusive depending on how they are perceived by other people. An exclusive boundary arises, for example, when a person adopts a marker that imposes restrictions on the behaviour of others. An inclusive boundary is created, by contrast, by the use of a marker with which other people are ready and able to associate. At

15640-413: The development of a strong ego identity, along with the proper integration into a stable society and culture, lead to a stronger sense of identity in general. Accordingly, a deficiency in either of these factors may increase the chance of an identity crisis or confusion. The "Neo-Eriksonian" identity status paradigm emerged in 1966, driven largely by the work of James Marcia . This model focuses on

15810-412: The dialectic of the Man–Woman relationship, thus a true explanation for society's treatment and mistreatment of women. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) and the philosopher of ethics Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) established the contemporary definitions, usages, and applications of the constitutive Other, as the radical counterpart of the Self. Lacan associated the Other with language and with

15980-715: The direction of Henri Claude at the Sainte-Anne Hospital , the major psychiatric hospital serving central Paris, at the Infirmary for the Insane of the Police Prefecture under Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault and also at the Hospital Henri-Rousselle. Lacan was involved with the Parisian surrealist movement of the 1930s, associating with André Breton , Georges Bataille , Salvador Dalí , and Pablo Picasso . For

16150-425: The disparities between the individual's heritage culture and the culture of the host country, as well as the level of adoption of the new culture versus the retention of the heritage culture. However, the effects of immigration and acculturation on identity can be moderated if the person possesses a strong personal identity . This established personal identity can serve as an "anchor" and play a "protective role" during

16320-441: The dynamic and fluid qualities of human social self-expression. Stuart Hall for example, suggests treating identity as a process, to take into account the reality of diverse and ever-changing social experience. Some scholars have introduced the idea of identification, whereby identity is perceived as made up of different components that are 'identified' and interpreted by individuals. The construction of an individual sense of self

16490-400: The ego and the Imaginary order itself are places of radical alienation: "alienation is constitutive of the Imaginary order". This relationship is also narcissistic . In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis , Lacan argues that the Symbolic order structures the visual field of the Imaginary, which means that it involves a linguistic dimension. If the signifier is the foundation of

16660-724: The essence of the West—Europe as a culturally homogeneous place—did not exist as a counterpart to Orientalism. In the postmodern era , the Orientalist practices of historical negationism , the writing of distorted histories about the places and peoples of "The East", continues in contemporary journalism; e.g. in the Third World, political parties practice Othering with fabricated facts about threat-reports and non-existent threats (political, social, military) that are meant to politically delegitimise opponent political parties composed of people from

16830-409: The ethical foundations of psychoanalysis and presented his "ethics for our time"—one that would, in the words of Freud, prove to be equal to the tragedy of modern man and to the "discontent of civilization." At the roots of the ethics is desire: the only promise of analysis is austere, it is the entrance-into-the-I (in French a play on words between l'entrée en je and l'entrée en jeu ). "I must come to

17000-464: The false binary-relations of social class, caste , and race , of sex and gender, and of nation and religion. The profitable functioning of a colony (economic or settler) requires continual protection of the cultural demarcations that are basic to the unequal socio-economic relation between the "civilised man" (the colonist) and the "savage man", thus the transformation of the Other into the colonial subaltern. The social exclusion function of Othering

17170-525: The female Other as the female-half of the binary-gender relation that is the Man and Woman relation. The deconstruction of the word Woman (the subordinate party in the Man and Woman relation) produced a conceptual reconstruction of the female Other as the Woman who exists independently of male definition, as rationalised by patriarchy. That the female Other is a self-aware Woman who is autonomous and independent of

17340-628: The first of their three children, a daughter named Caroline. A son, Thibaut, was born in August 1939 and a daughter, Sybille, in November 1940. The SPP was disbanded due to Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1940. Lacan was called up for military service which he undertook in periods of duty at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris, whilst at the same time continuing his private psychoanalytic practice. In 1942 he moved into apartments at 5 rue de Lille, which he would occupy until his death. During

17510-706: The formation of Christianity , throughout history, various Western thinkers who contributed to the development of European identity were influenced by classical cultures and incorporated elements of Greek culture as well as Jewish culture , leading to some movements such as Philhellenism and Philosemitism . Due to the multiple functions of identity which include self regulation, self-concept, personal control, meaning and direction, its implications are woven into many aspects of life. Identity transformations can occur in various contexts, some of which include: Immigration and acculturation often lead to shifts in social identity. The extent of this change depends on

17680-408: The function of the 'I' as revealed in psychoanalytic experience." By the early 1950s, he came to regard the mirror stage as more than a moment in the life of the infant; instead, it formed part of the permanent structure of subjectivity. In the "imaginary order", the subject's own image permanently catches and captivates the subject. Lacan explains that "the mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign

17850-629: The geographer Derek Gregory said that the US government's ideologic answers to questions about reasons for the terrorist attacks against the U.S. (i.e. 11 September 2001) reinforced the imperial purpose of the negative representations of the Middle-Eastern Other; especially when President G. W. Bush (2001–2009) rhetorically asked: "Why do they hate us?" as political prelude to the War on Terror (2001). Bush's rhetorical interrogation of armed resistance to empire, by

18020-457: The idea of the other mind in 1865 in An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy , the first formulation of the other after René Descartes (1596–1650). Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) applied the concept of the Other as the basis for intersubjectivity , the psychological relations among people. In Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (1931), Husserl said that

18190-415: The images into words. "The use of the Symbolic", he argued, "is the only way for the analytic process to cross the plane of identification." In his Seminar IV, "La relation d'objet", Lacan argues that the concepts of "Law" and "Structure" are unthinkable without language—thus the Symbolic is a linguistic dimension. This order is not equivalent to language, however, since language involves the Imaginary and

18360-438: The inequality arises from the social mechanics of intersubjectivity . About the production of knowledge of the Other who is not the Self , the philosopher Michel Foucault said that Othering is the creation and maintenance of imaginary "knowledge of the Other"—which comprises cultural representations in service to socio-political power and the establishment of hierarchies of domination . That cultural representations of

18530-531: The issue of identity at the level of both individual cognition and collective behavior. Many people gain a sense of positive self-esteem from their identity groups, which furthers a sense of community and belonging. Another issue that researchers have attempted to address is the question of why people engage in discrimination , i.e., why they tend to favour those they consider a part of their "in-group" over those considered to be outsiders. Both questions have been given extensive attention by researchers working in

18700-544: The lifespan that are each characterized by a conflict between the inner, personal world and the outer, social world of an individual. Erikson identified the conflict of identity as occurring primarily during adolescence and described potential outcomes that depend on how one deals with this conflict. Those who do not manage a resynthesis of childhood identifications are seen as being in a state of 'identity diffusion' whereas those who retain their given identities unquestioned have 'foreclosed' identities. On some readings of Erikson,

18870-501: The linguistic aspect of the unconscious, emphasizing Lacan's distinction between das Ding and die Sache in Freud's account of thing-presentation". Green's criticism of Lacan also included accusations of intellectual dishonesty, he said, "[He] cheated everybody... the return to Freud was an excuse, it just meant going to Lacan." Lacan's first official contribution to psychoanalysis was the mirror stage , which he described as "formative of

19040-437: The motherland) and (ii) the colonised (the subaltern native to be exploited) who antagonistically define and represent the Other as separate and apart from the colonial Self. Othering establishes unequal relationships of power between the colonised natives and the colonisers, who believe themselves essentially superior to the natives whom they othered into racial inferiority, as the non-white Other. That dehumanisation maintains

19210-458: The natural resources, and the cultures of the native inhabitants, as culturally inferior to the West. Historically, Western cartography often featured distortions (proportionate, proximate, and commercial) of places and true distances by placing the cartographer's homeland in the centre of the mapamundi ; these ideas were often utilized to support imperialistic expansion . In contemporary cartography,

19380-405: The nature of the Other retained the priority of ethics over metaphysics . In the psychology of the mind (e.g. R. D. Laing ), the Other identifies and refers to the unconscious mind , to silence , to insanity , and to language ("to what is referred and to what is unsaid"). Nonetheless, in such psychologic and analytic usages, there might arise a tendency to relativism if the Other person (as

19550-429: The newcomer's use of this particular language merely as a neutral sign of identity. But they might also perceive it as imposing an exclusive boundary that is meant to mark them off from the person. On the other hand, those who do understand the newcomer's language could take it as an inclusive boundary, through which the newcomer associates themself with them to the exclusion of the other people present. Equally, however, it

19720-415: The non-white Other in an artificial dominator-dominated relationship that can be resolved only through racialist noblesse oblige , the "moral responsibility" that psychologically allows the colonialist Self to believe that imperialism is a civilising mission to educate, convert, and then culturally assimilate the Other into the empire—thus transforming the "civilised" Other into the Self. In establishing

19890-505: The non–Western Other, produced an Us-and-Them mentality in American relations with the non-white peoples of the Middle East; hence, as foreign policy, the War on Terror is fought for control of imaginary geographies, which originated from the fetishised cultural representations of the Other invented by Orientalists ; the cultural critic Edward Saïd said that: To build a conceptual framework around

20060-423: The norms of binary-gender heterosexuality. In practise, sexual Othering is realised by applying the negative denotations and connotations of the terms that describe lesbian, gay, bisexual , and transgender people, in order to diminish their personal social status and political power , and so displace their LGBT communities to the legal margin of society. To neutralise such cultural Othering, LGBT communities queer

20230-519: The only valid model" —formed a basic conceptual starting-point in that oppositional strategy. Lacan thought that Freud's ideas of "slips of the tongue", jokes, and the interpretation of dreams all emphasized the agency of language in subjects' own constitution of themselves. In " The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud ," he proposes that "the psychoanalytic experience discovers in

20400-421: The other for another subject. In arguing that speech originates in neither the ego nor in the subject but rather in the other, Lacan stresses that speech and language are beyond the subject's conscious control. They come from another place, outside of consciousness—"the unconscious is the discourse of the Other". When conceiving the other as a place, Lacan refers to Freud's concept of psychical locality, in which

20570-631: The other. This means that there is always a signifier missing from the trove of signifiers constituted by the other. Lacan illustrates this incomplete other graphically by striking a bar through the symbol A ; hence another name for the castrated, incomplete other is the "barred other". Feminist thinkers have both utilised and criticised Lacan's concepts of castration and the phallus . Feminists such as Avital Ronell , Jane Gallop , and Elizabeth Grosz , have interpreted Lacan's work as opening up new possibilities for feminist theory. Some feminists have argued that Lacan's phallocentric analysis provides

20740-471: The overall social context . At the same time, the Eriksonian approach to identity remained in force, with the result that identity has continued until recently to be used in a largely socio-historical way to refer to qualities of sameness in relation to a person's connection to others and to a particular group of people. The first favours a primordialist approach which takes the sense of self and belonging to

20910-463: The parents' religious contacts, and individuation requires that the person chooses the same or different religious identity than that of their parents. The Parable of the Lost Sheep is one of the parables of Jesus. it is about a shepherd who leaves his flock of ninety-nine sheep in order to find the one which is lost. The parable of the lost sheep is an example of the rediscovery of identity. Its aim

21080-431: The past, present and future components of the experienced self. He also develops the concept of the "metaperspective of self", i.e. the self's perception of the other's view of self, which has been found to be extremely important in clinical contexts such as anorexia nervosa. Harré also conceptualises components of self/identity – the "person" (the unique being I am to myself and others) along with aspects of self (including

21250-400: The patriarchal West. When queried about their post-graduate lives, the majority of women interviewed at a university-class reunion, used binary gender language, and referred to and identified themselves by their social roles (wife, mother, lover) in the private sphere of life; and did not identify themselves by their own achievements (job, career, business) in the public sphere of life. Unawares,

21420-434: The patriarchy's formal subordination of the female sex with the institutional limitations of social convention , tradition , and customary law ; the social subordination of women is communicated (denoted and connoted) in the sexist usages of the word Woman . In 1949, the philosopher of existentialism , Simone de Beauvoir applied Hegel 's conception of "the Other" (as a constituent part of self-awareness ) to describe

21590-419: The people, places, and things of the Eastern world, as measured against the West, the standard of superior civilisation. Colonial stability requires the cultural subordination of the non-white Other for transformation into the subaltern native ; a colonised people who facilitate the exploitation of their labour , of their lands, and of the natural resources of their country. The practise of Othering justifies

21760-485: The phallus in a chiasmus with the hymen, as both one and other. Lacan considered psychic functions to occur within a universal matrix. The Real, Imaginary and Symbolic are properties of this matrix, which make up part of every psychic function. This is not analogous to Freud's concept of id, ego and superego since in Freud's model certain functions take place within components of the psyche while Lacan thought that all three orders were part of every function. Lacan refined

21930-402: The philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and topology . Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his followers from

22100-417: The physical domination and cultural subordination of the native people by degrading them—first from being a national-citizen to being a colonial-subject—and then by displacing them to the periphery of the colony, and of geopolitical enterprise that is imperialism. Using the false dichotomy of "colonial strength" (imperial power) against "native weakness" (military, social, and economic), the coloniser invents

22270-413: The place where the id was," where the analysand discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the truth of his desire. The end of psychoanalysis entails "the purification of desire." He defended three assertions: that psychoanalysis must have a scientific status; that Freudian ideas have radically changed the concepts of subject, of knowledge, and of desire; and that the analytic field is the only place from which it

22440-551: The polar-perspective maps of the northern hemisphere, drawn by U.S. cartographers, also frequently feature distorted spatial relations (distance, size, mass) of and between the U.S. and Russia which according to historian Jerome D. Fellman emphasise the perceived inferiority (military, cultural, geopolitical) of the Russian Other. In Key Concepts in Political Geography (2009), Alison Mountz proposed concrete definitions of

22610-617: The process of social and cultural identity transformations that occur. Identity is an ongoing and dynamic process that impacts an individual's ability to navigate life's challenges and cultivate a fulfilling existence. Within this process, occupation emerges as a significant factor that allows individuals to express and maintain their identity. Occupation encompasses not only careers or jobs but also activities such as travel, volunteering, sports, or caregiving. However, when individuals face limitations in their ability to participate or engage in meaningful activities, such as due to illness, it poses

22780-485: The realm of occupational identity, individuals make choices regarding employment based on the stigma associated with certain jobs. Likewise, those already working in stigmatized occupations may employ personal rationalization to justify their career path. Factors such as workplace satisfaction and overall quality of life play significant roles in these decisions. Individuals in such jobs face the challenge of forging an identity that aligns with their values and beliefs. Crafting

22950-451: The relational self is a perspective by which persons abandon all sense of exclusive self, and view all sense of identity in terms of social engagement with others. For Gergen, these strategies follow one another in phases, and they are linked to the increase in popularity of postmodern culture and the rise of telecommunications technology. Anthropologists have most frequently employed the term identity to refer to this idea of selfhood in

23120-418: The removal of Lacan from the list of SFP analysts. With the SFP's decision to honour this request in November 1963, Lacan had effectively been stripped of the right to conduct training analyses and thus was constrained to form his own institution in order to accommodate the many candidates who desired to continue their analyses with him. This he did, on 21 June 1964, in the "Founding Act" of what became known as

23290-400: The same genus united with my neighbor, by resemblance or common nature, individuations of the human race, or chips off the old block. . . . The others concern me from the first. Here, fraternity precedes the commonness of a genus. My relationship with the Other as neighbor gives meaning to my relations with all the others.— Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence Jacques Derrida said that

23460-404: The same time, however, an inclusive boundary will also impose restrictions on the people it has included by limiting their inclusion within other boundaries. An example of this is the use of a particular language by a newcomer in a room full of people speaking various languages. Some people may understand the language used by this person while others may not. Those who do not understand it might take

23630-504: The section for applied psychoanalysis (therapeutic and clinical, physicians who either have not started or have not yet completed analysis are welcome); and the section for taking inventory of the Freudian field (concerning the critique of psychoanalytic literature and the analysis of the theoretical relations with related or affiliated sciences). In 1967 he invented the procedure of the Pass , which

23800-404: The self is distinct from identity, the literature of self-psychology can offer some insight into how identity is maintained. From the vantage point of self-psychology, there are two areas of interest: the processes by which a self is formed (the "I"), and the actual content of the schemata which compose the self-concept (the "Me"). In the latter field, theorists have shown interest in relating

23970-423: The self-concept to self-esteem , the differences between complex and simple ways of organizing self-knowledge , and the links between those organizing principles and the processing of information. Weinreich's identity variant similarly includes the categories of identity diffusion, foreclosure and crisis, but with a somewhat different emphasis. Here, with respect to identity diffusion for example, an optimal level

24140-423: The seminar of Alexandre Kojève ) theorizes alterity in a manner more closely resembling Hegel's philosophy. Lacan often used an algebraic symbology for his concepts: the big other ( l'Autre ) is designated A , and the little other ( l'autre ) is designated a . He asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to analytic practice: "the analyst must be imbued with the difference between A and

24310-420: The sense of his or her body as fragmented, induces a movement from "insufficiency to anticipation." In other words, the mirror image initiates and then aids, like a crutch, the process of the formation of an integrated sense of self. In the mirror stage a "misunderstanding" ( méconnaissance ) constitutes the ego—the "me" ( moi ) becomes alienated from itself through the introduction of an imaginary dimension to

24480-454: The sense of personal identity (the sense of being a continuous and persistent self). Mark Mazower noted in 1998: "At some point in the 1970s this term ["identity"] was borrowed from social psychology and applied with abandon to societies , nations and groups." Erik Erikson (1902–94) became one of the earliest psychologists to take an explicit interest in identity. An essential feature of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development

24650-419: The social and ethnic groups designated as the Other in that society. The Othering of a person or of a social group—by means of an ideal ethnocentricity (the ethnic group of the Self) that evaluates and assigns negative, cultural meaning to the ethnic Other—is realised through cartography ; hence, the maps of Western cartographers emphasised and bolstered artificial representations of the national-identities,

24820-445: The social institutions (e.g., the professions ) invested with the corresponding socio-political power . Therefore, the imposition of Otherness alienates the person labelled as "the Other" from the centre of society, and places him or her at the margins of society, for being the Other. The term Othering or Otherizing describes the reductive action of labelling and defining a person as a subaltern native , as someone who belongs to

24990-407: The socially subordinate category of the Other. The practice of Othering excludes persons who do not fit the norm of the social group , which is a version of the Self; likewise, in human geography , the practice of othering persons means to exclude and displace them from the social group to the margins of society, where mainstream social norms do not apply to them, for being the Other. The concept of

25160-767: The standard analytic training session for the variable-length session , he immediately resigned his presidency. He and a number of colleagues then resigned from the SPP to form the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP). One consequence of this was to eventually deprive the new group of membership of the International Psychoanalytical Association . Encouraged by the reception of "the return to Freud" and of his report "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," Lacan began to re-read Freud's works in relation to contemporary philosophy , linguistics, ethnology , biology , and topology . From 1953 to 1964 at

25330-459: The subject. The mirror stage also has a significant symbolic dimension, due to the presence of the figure of the adult who carries the infant. Having jubilantly assumed the image as their own, the child turns their head towards this adult, who represents the big other , as if to call on the adult to ratify this image. While Freud uses the term "other", referring to der Andere (the other person) and das Andere (otherness), Lacan (influenced by

25500-414: The symbolic order of things. Levinas associated the Other with the ethical metaphysics of scripture and tradition ; the ethical proposition is that the Other is superior and prior to the Self. In the event, Levinas re-formulated the face-to-face encounter (wherein a person is morally responsible to the Other person) to include the propositions of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) about the impossibility of

25670-402: The symbolic, the signified and signification are part of the Imaginary order. Language has symbolic and Imaginary connotations—in its Imaginary aspect, language is the "wall of language" that inverts and distorts the discourse of the Other. The Imaginary, however, is rooted in the subject's relationship with his or her own body (the image of the body). In Fetishism: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and

25840-537: The term "identity" is most commonly used to describe personal identity , or the distinctive qualities or traits that make an individual unique. Identities are strongly associated with self-concept , self-image (one's mental model of oneself), self-esteem , and individuality . Individuals' identities are situated, but also contextual, situationally adaptive and changing. Despite their fluid character, identities often feel as if they are stable ubiquitous categories defining an individual, because of their grounding in

26010-522: The threat of conquest [hegemony]." The racialist perspective of the Western world during the 18th and 19th centuries was invented with the Othering of non-white peoples, which also was supported with the fabrications of scientific racism , such as the pseudo-science of phrenology , which claimed that, in relation to a white-man's head, the head-size of the non-European Other indicated inferior intelligence; e.g.

26180-467: The threat of deportation for Sylvia, who was Jewish, since this required her to live in the unoccupied territories. Lacan intervened personally with the authorities to obtain papers detailing her family origins, which he destroyed. In 1941 they had a child, Judith . She kept the name Bataille because Lacan wished to delay the announcement of his divorce until after the war. After the war, the SPP recommenced their meetings. In 1945 Lacan visited England for

26350-460: The transition from one to another by way of biographical experiences and resolution of conflicted identifications situated in various contexts – for example, an adolescent going through family break-up may be in one state, whereas later in a stable marriage with a secure professional role may be in another. Hence, though there is continuity, there is also development and change. Laing's definition of identity closely follows Erikson's, in emphasising

26520-426: The unconscious and language are structured, not that they share a single structure; and that the structure of language is such that the subject cannot necessarily be equated with the speaker. This results in the self being denied any point of reference to which to be "restored" following trauma or a crisis of identity. André Green objected that "when you read Freud, it is obvious that this proposition doesn't work for

26690-399: The unconscious is described as "the other scene". "It is the mother who first occupies the position of the big Other for the child", Dylan Evans explains, "it is she who receives the child's primitive cries and retroactively sanctions them as a particular message". The castration complex is formed when the child discovers that this other is not complete because there is a " lack (manque) " in

26860-443: The unconscious the whole structure of language". The unconscious is not a primitive or archetypal part of the mind separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, he explained, but rather a formation as complex and structurally sophisticated as consciousness itself. Lacan is associated with the idea that "the unconscious is structured like a language", but the first time this sentence occurs in his work, he clarifies that he means that both

27030-401: The war he did not publish any work, turning instead to a study of Chinese for which he obtained a degree from the École spéciale des langues orientales . In a relationship they formed before the war, Sylvia Bataille (née Maklès), the estranged wife of his friend Georges Bataille , became Lacan's mistress and, in 1953, his second wife. During the war their relationship was complicated by

27200-428: The wholeness of the image threatens the child with fragmentation—thus the mirror stage gives rise to an aggressive tension between the subject and the image. To resolve this aggressive tension, the child identifies with the image: this primary identification with the counterpart forms the ego. Lacan understood this moment of identification as a moment of jubilation, since it leads to an imaginary sense of mastery; yet when

27370-418: The women had acted conventionally , and automatically identified and referred to themselves as the social Other to men. Although the nature of the social Other is influenced by the society's social constructs ( social class , sex , gender ), as a human organisation, society holds the socio-political power to formally change the social relation between the male-defined Self and Woman , the sexual Other, who

27540-561: The young Lacan... [who] also shared the surrealists' taste for scandal and provocation, and viewed provocation as an important element in psycho-analysis itself". In 1931, after a second year at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, Lacan was awarded his Diplôme de médecin légiste (a medical examiner 's qualification) and became a licensed forensic psychiatrist . The following year he was awarded his Diplôme d'État de docteur en médecine  [ fr ] (roughly equivalent to an M.D. degree) for his thesis "On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to

27710-588: Was Wallon who commissioned from Lacan the last major text of his pre-war period, a contribution to the 1938 Encyclopédie française entitled "La Famille" (reprinted in 1984 as "Les Complexes familiaux dans la formation de l'individu", Paris: Navarin). 1938 was also the year of Lacan's accession to full membership ( membre titulaire ) of the SPP, notwithstanding considerable opposition from many of its senior members who were unimpressed by his recasting of Freudian theory in philosophical terms. Lacan married Marie-Louise Blondin in January 1934 and in January 1937 they had

27880-509: Was a more muted affair. Here he attempted "to restore to the notion of the Object Relation... the capital of experience that legitimately belongs to it", building upon what he termed "the hesitant, but controlled work of Melanie Klein ... Through her we know the function of the imaginary primordial enclosure formed by the imago of the mother's body", as well as upon "the notion of the transitional object , introduced by D. W. Winnicott ...

28050-508: Was a successful soap and oils salesman. His mother was ardently Catholic – his younger brother entered a monastery in 1929. Lacan attended the Collège Stanislas between 1907 and 1918. An interest in philosophy led him to a preoccupation with the work of Spinoza , one outcome of which was his abandonment of religious faith for atheism . There were tensions in the family around this issue, and he regretted not persuading his brother to take

28220-449: Was added to the statutes after being voted in by the members of the EFP the following year. 1966 saw the publication of Lacan's collected writings, the Écrits , compiled with an index of concepts by Jacques-Alain Miller. Printed by the prestigious publishing house Éditions du Seuil , the Écrits did much to establish Lacan's reputation to a wider public. The success of the publication led to

28390-724: Was based on observations of several patients with a primary focus on one female patient whom he called Aimée . Its exhaustive reconstruction of her family history and social relations, on which he based his analysis of her paranoid state of mind, demonstrated his dissatisfaction with traditional psychiatry and the growing influence of Freud on his ideas. Also in 1932, Lacan published a translation of Freud's 1922 text " Über einige neurotische Mechanismen bei Eifersucht, Paranoia und Homosexualität " ("Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality") as " De quelques mécanismes névrotiques dans la jalousie, la paranoïa et l'homosexualité " in

28560-459: Was intellectually justified by (among other reasons) orientalism , the study and fetishization of the Eastern world as "primitive peoples" requiring modernisation the civilising mission . Colonial empires were justified and realised with essentialist and reductive representations (of people, places, and cultures) in books and pictures and fashion, which conflated different cultures and peoples into

28730-513: Was preceded by the European imperial system of economic and settler colonies in which "the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states, and often in the form of an empire, [was] based on domination and subordination ." In the imperialist world system, political and economic affairs were fragmented, and the discrete empires "provided for most of their own needs ... [and disseminated] their influence solely through conquest [empire] or

28900-518: Was the idea of the ego identity (often referred to as the self ), which is described as an individual's personal sense of continuity. He suggested that people can attain this feeling throughout their lives as they develop and is meant to be an ongoing process. The ego-identity consists of two main features: one's personal characteristics and development, and the culmination of social and cultural factors and roles that impact one's identity. In Erikson's theory, he describes eight distinct stages across

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