dialecticbetween the fragmented body and the unity of the specular image as expe-
rienced by the subject that the genesis of the ego is to be sought: the primordial
ego (Ur-Ich) as the alienating identificationwith the specular image corresponds to
the misrecognizing stagnation of such a dialectical process, which nevertheless
continues its activity. This is why fantasies of fragmentation may reemerge in some
formations of the unconscious such as dreams and, at an organic level, in certain
hysterical psychosomatic symptoms.^23
( 4 ) The primordial ego as a mental object is thus the product of a reification that
follows—if not chronologically, then at least logically—the first movement of a
psychic dialectical process. The specular image in which the subject alienates him-
self in order to acquire a unity is introjectedby him and forms the primal basis of his
ego. However, the relationship between the subject and the external perfection of
the specular image will always presuppose an irreducible dialectical tension. All
this means that if, on the one hand, the mirror stage allows the subject to individ-
uate himself as ego, on the other, the emergence of the ego constitutes the primary
source of the subject’s alienated status, since it is based on an alienation in the other,
that is to say, a structural disjunction between the ego and the subject. The image
that institutes the subject as an ego is the same image that separates the subject from
himself. Despite the achievement of an (alienated) identification, the specular im-
age thus represents an unattainable ideal image for the subject: the Lacanian name
for this ideal image is ideal ego.Given that what takes place at this point corresponds
to the repetition at a higher level of psychic development of the first dialectical re-
lation between the fragmented subject and the specular image, one could also state
that the ideal ego is nothing other than the specular image as experienced by a sub-
ject whose ego is by now at least partially formed. As we shall now see in more de-
tail, if the ego is introjected by the subject, the ideal ego is in its turn projectedby the
subjectqua ego onto all other subjects as well as onto all objects.
1.3 Hainamoration,Ideal Ego and Ego-Ideal
The primordial ego corresponds to the first alienated stratum of our imaginary
identity, the product of an original alienating redoubling of the subject caused by
his capacity to identify himself with his mirror image (or with the imaginary other
understood as a mirror image). Such an identification relies on the fact that the
subject is captivated by the image of the human body that functions as a Gestalt.The
Ur-Ichthus attempts to realize an impossible coincidence with the ideal image
reflected by the mirror: given such an impossibility, this relationship ends up in a
permanent rivalry of the subject with himself, with the narcissistic image of him-
self that the lure of the mirror creates. Such a rivalry is already evident at the level