ABSTRACT
A few years ago, the author received an individual who was trying out every possible treatment and solution so as to become the best ballet dancer in an upcoming show. Psychoanalysis, as seems to be true for many other patients, was reduced to a “mind spa” for her. Nina Sayers, the main protagonist, did whatever it took to perform her best and to attain “perfection” as a ballet dancer. The aggression and absolute narcissism in Nina’s life are well depicted in this film. Paranoid thoughts and delusions are part and parcel of the dualism between an omnipotent mother and the child from which a symbolic space is foreclosed. The inception of Lacan’s theory of the mirror phase dates back to the mid-1930s. After 1949, from the specular image in the mirror and the body image, Lacan gradually moved toward theorising the Imaginary order as a part of the subject’s structure.
