ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how remembered images, conceptualized as interpersonal icons, provides experiential evidence for Jacques Lacan's semiotic psychoanalytic formulations, and simultaneously suggests how Lacan's approach can be extended to the study of interpersonal communication. The formation of self-images, images for others, and images of others, are better understood as coconstructions emerging out of the dialogic encounter, rather than as the result of internal psychological processes or characteristics of individuals. Popular writings that emphasize image formation to enhance self-concept promote a nondialogic understanding of human communication. Lacanian psychoanalysis further suggests that this nondialogic perspective has its roots in narcissistic tendencies linked to the formation of images. The chapter utilizes examples from a film and brief descriptions of relationship encounters to elucidate the potential usefulness of Lacan's approach to understanding interpersonal icons. Lacan parallels Freud's notions of ego ideal and ideal ego with the notions of narcissism and identification.
