that Lacan recognizes that the subject’s imaginary identity lies literally outside of
himself. It corresponds to a paradoxically alienated identity. In other words, the ego
lies outside (what is generally thought to be) the (self-contained identity of the)
ego.^4 This is why, in these years, Lacan often refers to Rimbaud’s motto “je est un
autre.”Consequently, the ego, to be understood as the subject’s imaginary identity,
cannot directly be equated with the individual: the egoqua imaginary identity in-
dividuates the subject only by way of a detour through the other.
Two fundamental issues have to be raised in order to clarify this point: ( 1 ) How
is this imaginary alienationof the subject in the other achieved? ( 2 ) In what sense
does it provide the subject with his imaginary identity? These two questions could
be expressed in one: how can the image (of the other) be considered as a source
of alienating psychic identification for the subject? In “On Narcissism: An Intro-
duction,”^5 Freud had already emphasized how the baby’s psychic development de-
pends upon his being captured by images (both of his mother’s body and of his
own body). Lacan reworks this Freudian theme and attributes a “morphogenetic”
function to images—that is to say, he believes that certain images are able to ex-
ercise a (de)formative power over the subject’s psyche; given their importance,
he also deems these images—or, more correctly, imagos—to be the precise object
of psychoanalytic theory.^6 According to Lacan, imaginary identification occurs in
the subject through the unconscious assumption of an external image (initially of
the subject’s own body as reflected in a mirror) in which he recognizes himself.
Therefore, identification does not imply the mere influencing of the subject by an
external image or an imitative relationship between the latter and a preexisting
ego: on the contrary, the ego can first be created only because the image irremedi-
ably “traps” the subject. It is in this sense that Lacan defines imaginary identifi-
cation as psychically causal: the ego is a psychic agency caused in the subject by his
alienating identification with a series of external images. The ego is an other, since
the imagos’(de)formative power absorbs and captures the subject. Lacan uses the
term “captation”to describe this process: as Evans has noted, this term could be ren-
dered in English as both capture—the subject is in fact necessarilyattracted by the ex-
ternal image that alienates him—and captivation—given that, as we shall later see in
more detail, this inevitable capture fascinatesthe subject by providing him with a pri-
mal, though alienated, form of identification.^7 The ambivalent status of the Imag-
inary is recognized by Lacan himself when he states that the ego is a “vital dehiscence
that is constitutive of man”:^8 in his first theory of the subject, this is the principal
paradox upon which both subjectivity and human life tout courtare based.
In order to produce a more precise account of the genesis of the ego, it is
convenient to refer to Lacan’s famous theory of the mirror stage (dating back to
1936 ), which rigorously delineates his notion of the subject’s alienating imaginary
identification. According to Lacan, an original alienating identification occurs for
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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