image provided either by the mirror or by another human being—from a (mini-
mally) extraimaginary jealousy between two subjects when they relate to a third
object, that is, intrusion stricto sensu.Jealousy is in this last case described as the “ar-
chetype of all social feelings,” given that by recognizing the other “with whom
either fights or contracts are started,” the subject “finds at the same time... the
socialized object.”^66 Even in this text, Lacan fails to demonstrate clearly how such
a fundamental change occurs.
Finally, the Oedipus complex takes place between a child of three to five years
of age and those persons around him who embody the maternal and paternal func-
tion. Its basic structure involves love for the parent of the opposite sex and rivalry
with the parent of the same sex. If, on the one hand, Lacan, unlike Freud, recog-
nizes the cultural relativity of the conjugal family on which this relationship is
based in modern and contemporary Western societies, on the other, he reaffirms
the universality of the resolution of the Oedipus complex to be understood as the
prohibition of incest and consequent emergence of Law (together with a concom-
itant possibility of transgressing it).^67 The subject resolves this last complex by an
alienating identification with the imagoof the father from which he derives his ego-
ideal; the ego-ideal is only one consequence of the subject’s entry into the Law, the
other being the superego as repressive agency, which is also brought about by the
imagoof the father.
In his early works, Lacan repeatedly and explicitly speaks of psychoanalysis in
terms of a dialectic: I believe this claim must be taken quite at face value. In fact, not
only does Lacan attempt to read Freud’s psychoanalytic techniquein dialectical
terms,^68 he also develops a new psychoanalytic theorythat audaciously combines
Hegelian philosophy with the evidence drawn from ethological and psychological
experiments to provide us with a highly original theory of the subject’s psychic
development. The strict, if not forced, dialectical geometry of such a process is
generally overlooked by Lacanian commentators. On the contrary, I believe that its
rigor is strikingly evident in the succession of the three complexes as presented
in “Les complexes familiaux.” According to Lacan, the introduction of a com-
plex—which in different guises compensates for the subject’s persistent help-
lessness—always follows a biopsychical crisis,^69 and precedes the resolution of
the complex itself to be understood as a new crisis. To use Hegelian terminology,
it is possible to state that every complexqua synthesis (Aufhebung) that allows the
unfolding of a particular stage of psychic development (quathesis) follows a crisis
qua antithesis/negation and precedes a new, “higher” crisis (quanew antithesis).
Prematurity of birth must consequently be considered as a primordial crisis/an-
tithesis; the weaning complex, which compensates for it, provides the subject with
an initial synthesis and an initial development of the psyche, whereas weaning
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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