stricto sensu(delactation) introduces a new crisis/antithesis (which corresponds to
the resolution of the weaning complex—weaning in the broad sense of the word).
The intrusion complex which follows it—“identifying jealousy,” the aggressive
narcissistic relation of the subject with the specular image, equally directed toward
other siblings of the same age—must be understood as a new synthesis/thesis
which is then interrupted by intrusion stricto sensu,the recognition of the other as
other. Intrusion stricto sensuthus constitutes a new crisis/antithesis and the solu-
tion of the intrusion complex. Finally, the Oedipus complex is a new synthesis/
thesis that implies the love for the parent of the opposite sex from the standpoint
of a subject whose (alienated) ego is by now clearly able to separate itself from
the other. The resolution of this complex in the prohibition of incest achieved by
the threat of castration—which Lacan refuses to read in terms of a real threat and
understands, rather, as a resumption of the image of the fragmented body^70 — con-
stitutes a new crisis/antithesis. This is in turn followed by a new synthetic identi-
fication with the imagoof the father (the introjection of the ego-ideal).
It is evident that, throughout this process, psychic synthesis (Aufhebung) simul-
taneously annuls, preserves, and raises to a higher level a permanent psychic op-
position. The subject’s psyche develops in parallel. Imaginary alienation, originally
determined by prematurity of birth, never ends. Man remains a disadapted animal.
He never attains the homeostatic zero at which the animal’s psyche is set, a zero
that should also be applied to the animal’s sexual life: animal instincts are in direct
relation to their object, while man breaks the “immediate adaptation to the en-
vironment that defines the animal’s world by its innateness [connaturalité],” he in-
terrupts the “living being’s unity of functioning which, in the animal, submits
perception to instincts.”^71 However, man’s disadaptation—which is also sexual—
is equaled by his outstanding psychic capacities; as Hyppolite notes in one of his
numerous interventions in Seminar I: “Knowledge, that is to say humanity, is the
failure of sexuality.”^72 Lacan believes that readaptation, a—never complete—redi-
rection of man’s narcissistic and (self)-destructive ego libido toward the genital
object (and therefore to the accomplishment of his animal task with respect to the
species), is made possible only by the mediation of (the resolution of ) the Oedi-
pus complex, that is to say, culturally. In Seminar I, Lacan distinguishes primary
narcissism from secondary narcissism, and indicates the way in which they corre-
spond to two forms of libido. Primary narcissism depends on Gestalten,and is there-
fore valid for animals and man alike: it corresponds to sexual libido. Secondary
narcissism is, rather, the consequence of the alienating identification(s) produced
by the Gestaltof the human body for the human psyche: thus it corresponds to ego
libido, that is to say, narcissism stricto sensu.Here Lacan is making two fundamentalthe subject of the imaginary (other)