ABSTRACT
Focused on the formation of the subject and the role of the unconscious, Jacques Lacan’s work constitutes a radical reinterpretation of Sigmund freud in the light of structuralism. Lacan’s famous assertation is that the “unconscious is structured like a language.” Lacan argues that the mirror stage occurs between the ages of six and eighteen months, when the child first recognizes itself in a mirror as a seemingly coherent whole entity. According to Lacan’s often criticized narrative of child development, the child’s entry into language coincides with its separation from the mother. Lacan develops this understanding of ego formation and the unconscious vis-a-vis the structural linguistics of Saussure. For Lacan, the birth of subjectivity is one’s entry into language, understood as a synchronic system of signs and social codes that generate meaning. The Real is the order in Lacan’s system that underwrites, so to speak, the actions described in the Imaginary and the Symbolic.
