reminds me of the Margaret Atwood quote: "Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur."
i rarely comment but i have to now - im impressed, this is one of the few good explanations of lacan available on the internet. i got through a lot of them because im trying to understand his thought rn (at least a bit). so thank you so much for this video, it helped to connect everything!
I've watched this video four times now and my understanding matures like a fine wine on each iteration. I wouldn't say I'm ready for reading Écrite just yet, there's plenty more that I'm reading to give myself a descent platform for comprehending this challenging subject matter - studying the basics of semiotics at the moment. That said, my one concern about the publication of this superior video was that it might be too much of a leap for someone encountering Lacan for the first time. What amazes me, is that Lacan has never been a walk in the park to comprehend; yet your videos have made the concepts unbelievably accessible to a layman such as I. Therefore, when I think about it, had I never seen your older video, I would have done exactly the same as I am currently doing. Understanding it a little more each time I watch the video. I think that's the wonderful thing with your videos; you explain the subject so well, that there is always a doorway to pass through instead of a barrier to entry. Thank you so much.
"'You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.' 'This is good news?' 'It is the truth. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.' 'The burning doesn't go away?' 'What fire dies when you feed it? It is not fame itself they wish to deny you here. Trust them. There is much fear in fame. Terrible and heavy fear to be pulled and held, carried. Perhaps they want only to keep it off you until you weigh enough to pull it toward yourself.' 'Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn't make me feel very much better at all?' 'LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.' 'So I'm stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There's no way out.' 'You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage. And I believe I see a drop on your temple, right ... there .... ' Etc." -Lyle from the pump room (infinite jest pg 389.)
I just have to hand it to you, you do a great job, both as a writer and a performer. The fact that you left in the “slip up” when you began addressing the Real is next-level smart as the accidental gaff, the stumble, the error, announces or “displays” (Wittgenstein) the Real. Thanks so much for doing these, I hope you get all the imaginary things you want!
The best video about Lacan ever. Thank you for your coherent, detailed and creative explanations with examples and images that are actual for our (post)modern society.
I love how all the advertisements on your videos on psychoanalysis are for self-help gurus, selling products to fulfill and resolve you. Zizek's hypothesis that the machine cannot tell coffee without cream from coffee without milk seems proven. What a funny world.
I've watched the old one at least four times over to try and fully soak it in. It was a (loud) window into something I'd never even heard of. It was amazing. This one is even better.
I was listening, then when I heard "celebrity" automatically, an critically, Chris Cornell came to my mind... then everything unfolded, nice to find such coincidence. I'd choose peace over fame anytime, being blessed with talent, looks or even sheer luck can be a deadly trap for the self. Great work indeed!
Dude, ur videos have played a big part in my life lately. They answer so many questions I have. I’m promoting ur work in discord servers etc. u r awesome
For anybody who hasn’t already seen it “I heart Huckabees” is an absolute masterpiece, I love how you’ve referenced it multiple times in the original video and this one.
wow! Trying to understand Zitzen "The sublime object..." I stumbled across your podcast. Great stuff. Thank you very much. I just have to watch it like 3-4 times because the amount of information is huge. But I finally understand stuff
All of a sudden my unstable sense of self - one of the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, with which I’ve been diagnosed - doesn’t seem so bad, if no-one can ever realise their true self...
I am generally opposed to psychiatry for exactly this reason. Your diagnosis becomes an identity - you are a BPD person, not a person with BPD, and your diagnosis becomes a biological explanation for your problems. That’s before we get on to the political function of psychiatry as a tool of control; dissatisfaction with the society you live in becomes ‘depression’, which can be repressed (in every sense of the term) by being dosed with drugs. Alienation, transient consumer identity and the fragmented self become ‘BPD’. In the most obvious example, anxiety becomes an anxiety ‘disorder’. It individualises and medicalises affects that are at least exacerbated, if not produced, by society and social life. We live with a ‘therapeutic’ state, where the resolution to your problems become a continual ‘openness’, in some cases to a psychiatrist (who prescribes the necessary remedy to change this problematic and unproductive neurotic into a productive member of society), but most commonly to the society itself. Your identification as a BPD person is pleasurable because it compels society to recognise your feelings of instability and impersonality, but that is all that is done - these feelings are recognised, but they are recognised as symptoms to be treated, not as genuine affective states. The habit of putting your diagnoses in your Twitter bio is obviously in the first instance just another transient identity to attach yourself to, but it also functions as a kind of parasocial therapy, a cathartic act of disclosure - but one that permits your feelings to be medicalised and dismissed, instead of meaningfully considered and analysed. This is not to say that some psychiatric diagnoses don’t actually describe a biochemical reality, but as Mark Fisher puts it: the problem to be addressed is not that you have low levels of serotonin, but the thing that is causing you to have low levels of serotonin. Psychiatry in its current form is just another tool of regulation and control, another counterbalance of capital that dampens its psychologically destructive effects through literal (chemically or socially enforced) mind control. Some psychiatry is necessary, but most of it is BS.
@@rmcewan10 100% its all made up...and there is a strange zoomer fetishization for being othered into some cognitive abnormal group so they gain externalized specialization to assuage the void within them left by reification and alienation.... Marcuse and Eric Fromm really nailed this one....
@@daniel-zh4qc I’m a zoomer who has only really got interested and involved in politics and social media over the past year or two, and I am taken aback by how bad things actually are. I’ve seen people castrating themselves (with evidence) for ‘feminism and BLM’, I’ve seen what may well have been real children tagging themselves as ‘MAP-friendly’, I’ve seen kids in the single digits being encouraged to transition; idpol and the whole cultural complex of purging the slightest dissent from the mainstream (always bourgeois) ideology on the left, and at the same time a revitalised and resurgent openly fascist right; it’s like the worst fever dream of Mark Fisher mixed with the worst prognostications of Deleuze and Guatarri. I’m just dumbfounded. I cling to the vague hope that there might still be some disruptive potential in this generation, if only because for us political extremism (more left than right thankfully, but still too often lib left) is the norm, but at this point I’m ready to embrace some form of Left-Accelerationism. Our discourse and politics is so utterly bizarre, so unpredictable, so authentically schizophrenic, at this point I don’t really know what else there is.
I have a tremendous difficulty in recognizing myself in mirrors and photographs. I have no idea what this means. It started about 6 years ago following an incredibly traumatic event. I've heard people describe "ego death" and that sounds like what I experienced. Even my memories before the event feel like a movie.
You still have a conception of yourself, an image that exists regardless of the visual image--to me, in agreement with a previous comment, this seems more like a dissociation from the visual image that is "yourself," something that I also experience although there exists not some traumatic event, some Real intruding into my imaginary and symbolic structures... I should read more.
Reminds me of this quote: “Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” ― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride I've always been quite struck by how, as you put it, the "anxieties" of this thought process are something I've experienced, and this was the first quote I saw that put it to words so literally, but I can see the mapping of an idealized Self that I Desire onto some Image that I got from media, and how that gap will never be closed because, of course, the Image was just an Image, and not a Me that I could ever really "be".
"Masquerade" had me expecting some inclusion of Lacan's formulas of sexuation, but you were using it in the conventional sense. It is notable, however, that the "masquerade" you reference is actually the masculine imposture of the phallic function rather than the feminine masquerade, which invites one to see what is behind the mask, which is nothing, the very lack of the barred subject. Your brief discussion of the gaze was excellent and gave me a sudden insight that in a way triggered something of my own feeble autoanalysis. I would comment that Lacan's discussion of the gaze is no little reference to Merleau-Ponty but quite a big one! Looking forward to that video.
@@PlasticPills I had been studying it recently, so it was top of mind, I suppose. I think a video from you cutting across castration, the phallus, and the formulas of sexuation would be excellent. That topic, "there is no sexual relationship", badly needs an expression digestible to the non-specialist. It's click-baity too.
Half way through this vid, liked and subscribed. I’ve been trying to learn about psychoanalysis these past few months and couldn’t understand many things. This vid clears up so much for me. Thank you! Love from Taiwan ♥️
Check Jacques-Alain Miller’s Introductions to the seminars, he gives a bit of reasons why Lacan and Hegel are intertwined (for a (fundamental) lack of a better word).
The key bottleneck is Alexandre Kojève's lectures in Paris (which Lacan, Sartre, and Merleu-Ponty all attended when they were youngins). The lectures are published in "Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit."
Thank you for another clear and cool video. Maybe one on Lacan's concept of the Sinthome? Seems like it's not tackled that often despite it being of vital importance.
Just discovered your channel and i must say it's excellent! Production is great, the videos are easy to follow and you are entertaining enough to keep my interest but not over the top to make it silly. Very well done man. Thank you!
As an artist, the imaginary audience and critics are very real. Although I image myself as a child in that crowd thinking that the person I am now as the coolest man ever, the person I actually am now is always fighting mediocrity.
I really liked this whole thing about celebrity as an example of an image of "completeness" regarding desire. I know psychoanalysis relates mainly to Freud, but this made me think of Adler and his whole thing of turning desire on its head and asserting that every moment actually is "complete" if we so allow in relation to his other ideas. Maybe I've missed the mark but it might be another angle to approach this sort of thinking from.
No, because the idea of the mirror or the role it plays in a person formulating their respective self would come about regardless. The mirror stage had to come before the mirror just in a different vehicle
i cried through most of this. the illustrations with the pyramid shape and the triangle of real-symbolic-imaginary remind me heavily of things i was furiously writing down and drawing this summer,
Hello, congrats for this great video. I would just add that watching it, one could think that Lacan is a very abstract and theoretical thinker. One should add that he also is a very attentive reader of many other great authors, in psychoanalysis, surely Freud, but also Jones, Balint, Klein, and so on, in philosophy, in art, and that his reflexion connects with many cultural and historical references, which gives a very interesting perspective to his thinking. In his seminaries he also described the analytical praxis a huge lot, and commented lots of cases described by others...So aside his general ideas, there are many many interesting things to discover in his work, because this is absolutely not the kind of theorician who exposes an idea and builds a very structured argumentation to support it. On the contrary, he tries to make others understand his conceptions from within the questions...Which gives his works a real complexity, one cannot read them ”half-minded”, it requires a lot of concentration. But it is also really brilliant in many occurrences...
Inevitably in every life the illusion we project onto the Real begins breaking down and we begin noticing absurd coincidences and paradoxical behavior. The question is how long will you cling to that small fragment of the real you call yourself before you embark on the journey of enlightenment to experience and thereby understand all that is, all that was, and all that can be. Life is about experiencing all of it so that you can become complete and then do it all over again when you inevitably decide to replay the cosmic song and dance along
I appreciate learning about Lacan in this video. The use of mirror imagery is ever so clever relating to the drive in the pursuit of the gap of the 'I' without people being consciously aware of it; and the ensuing suffering as a result of never ending pursuit in one's life. While desire, delusion, illusion, anxiety, phenomenology are plentifully covered in buddhist literatures and expressed in the simplest terms as the Four Noble Truth for 2000 years, advertisement and social media continue to manipulate a lot of people with increasing effeciency. That industry has a upperhand in fostering desires with a sweet coating, as illustrated by this video. Are we the helpless consumers without care about the health of our planet?
That was very good and very dense. Lacan, as interpreted by Plastic Pills, provides a theory, a framework for characterizing and making sense of the behaviors and expressions of people in a general sense. As for any theory we would ask: To what degree is it accurate? What inaccuracies may there be? What value judgments are being made? Can the characterized behaviors and expressions be seen in usefully alternate ways? My initial impression is that the theory characterizes many aspects of human behavior well. But as with any theory of behavior, it is a kind of template overlaid on quite complex behavior. We would need to be careful in assuming a theory as necessarily true and then trying to fit complex behavior into small boxes to support the truth of a theory already accepted. These theories are more useful in pointing the way. Sometimes the pointed way loses cohesion. Is that confusion because we misunderstood the theory, because we applied the theory improperly, that the theory does not apply in this circumstance, or that we need a better theory? In a theory like this and similarly for Freud’s ideas, because of their professions, are we dealing with individuals whose behaviors are not all that common in the general population? Severe neurosis is something to be treated but commonplace neurosis could be seen as healthy for the individual and society. Saying there is some fault in how humans perceive themselves and their reality does not necessarily follow from the simple observation that humanity in terms of population and adaptation are doing very well, perhaps too well on some measures. Apparently the idea is that when we understand ourselves according to Lacan’s theory that that will somehow help us avoid pitfalls the theory identifies. That there is someway to rise above these more automatic reactions and less useful behavior modalities. Except that the video implication is that though we may understand and be able to see that the theory applies to ourselves that, however, we can not escape to any significant degree. The impression from the video appears to be that we can work to minimize excesses identified by the theory and have overall better mental health even though we are still bound by it. That might work if we do not get too tightly bound by Lacan, in getting neurotic about being neurotic.
Well, one has to consider that Lacan has had almost no impact on serious psychologists or psychiatrists. He's largely a humanities interest and read by people without training.
I don't know where he said it but I believe Lacan said something along the lines of "Buddhism is the best of the East". Not sure if he ever wrote or spoke much dealing with Buddhism as a subject of study. Plenty has been written by others trying to reconcile the two. But watching this video got me thinking about Buddhism myself. There is certainly a strong correlation between this PlasticPillsian 'we need to accept unquenched desire as fundamental to our being' and the Buddhist 'we need to accept impermanence as fundamental to our being' or something like that. The Lacanian real can abruptly destroy one's coordinates (ie traumatic or just plain absurd events like a stage actor laughing too loudly for too long during a play). This is kind of like how meditations on the impermanence of objects, bodies, and processes has the effect of restructuring your reality itself. Your underlying fantasies which restrain the Lacanian real are broadened in a gentle way instead of all at once like trauma/absurdity. Letting reality in gently to subsume the desiring ego, rather than reality abruptly harming the ego as life so regularly does.
Same! Definitely got me thinking about the paradox of seeking or “desiring” nirvana, to be free from these desires. Does achieving nirvana mean to be a “complete” thing? Idk this is all cool to ponder but as I get older I realize the best thing is to just cruise through life smooth brain style
Fucking fantastic. This is a very well done video. The editing is incredible. And, you demonstrate a superb understanding of very complex material. I’m subscribed.
Just in time when I need to learn this for class, perfect timing, thank you mr Pills :) had to read a primary text on the mirror stage, couldn't take out 1 thing out of it
I've learned all that in my years of psychedelics. It feels like semantic knowledge is limited and castrated through language itself. Even what we're seeing in this video is imaginary. The video, the voice, everything becomes an imaginary of what all of these theories are actually talking about (the unnamable experience). This unity to see the real as a multifaced, multidimensional thing that is both form and untangible, happening in the past, present, and future at the same time. Feeling is the closest I call to reaching the "self.". I remember the voice in my head (the one from where your mind is reading this right now) saying, "I'm God." But what does that actually mean? The "self" "is" "God" as in a coherent form? That can't happen, for then, God is limited. The ego in this sense feels equally "wrong," for the identification experience wasn't with the outer world but with the inner, passing the "self" identification of the ego (my name and all social, desired, linguistical, sensory and perceptive experiences.).
Imagine its repeating the pattern. When you attain something desired and it doesn't make you whole happy fulfilled etc. Another object of desire takes it place, which in turn doesn't work. repeating over and over again. When people talk about being caught up in the human condition, this is a big part of what they mean it seems.
I really like your work mate. I'm very much into Jungian psychology, but recently I've been trying to branch out. Ecrits is almost impenetrable to me so far, and your videos are helping a lot. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I do find Lacan, from what I currently understand, incredibly bleak. I feel like a lot of his ideas might be applicable if you're a completely messed up person, but if you work hard in everything you do, including your relationships, are always trying to improve yourself, and keep well away from the toxicity of social media, consumerism etc, then why would you need someone to sit there telling you, 'You know, whatever you think you love about your girlfriend, you've just invented it, it doesn't exist; there's a hole in you that will never be filled and whatever you think you are, you're not'? I mean, how does that help you stand tall in the face of your own mortality and live a meaningful life?
Millions of great people have done great things in the face of this predicament. Happiness and meaning are not that important when one is compelled to do the work they’ve decided must be done. If you require “meaning” just make it up as you go and stop learning from the great thinkers that asked hard questions.
So, what ever happend to "know thyself" Falling in love is a moment of understanding self and other...and a love affair will, eventually, indeed fill the emptyness within. I guarantee it. :)
Nice video! Would really appreciate a video on Lacan vs. Deleuze one at this point. Can somebody give me feedback on my my amateur understanding of both? Those partial objects and signifiers seem to be pretty close in their mechanics. While Deleuze would once more smash the triangle here (despotic signifiers), it would "reverse" the desire as a lack into a production right?
I don’t think we want a solution, like jouissance/ Freuds death drive we’re ‘happy’ when we dont quite have everything, endless desire without realising the truth. Celebrities are the sacrifices of our own complete desires, and often that ends tragically. We/ I prefer to live as a projection of an ideal rather than face inward and live knowing I can never know myself or be complete. Lacan kind of gives a roadmap, he doesnt give a solution because he understands most of us dont want to face the void and that’s just the human condition. Can’t wait for more!
Love the channel. The original Lacan was eye opening for me in a lot of important ways. This one is an interesting reframing. But, a word of critique...don't get too caught up in the bells and whistles. More fx does not equal better. In fact, they can distract from what you're trying to communicate. You could cut your render time in half and have a simpler, clearer presentation of your message. Find the balance. Just my 2c
I think Lacan was inspired by Sartre when it comes to these ideas of lack and that we are always projecting ourselves outwards (Lacan once said that everyone should read "Being and Nothingness", and Sartre went to see Lacan when he had hallucinations of crabs after taking mescalin). But Sartre took these ideas from Heidegger, with the idea that Dasein is always outstanding, and that we are always reaching out towards the future.
8:30 To take a biological view on Lacan's desire: A subject without negation would be dead. Imagine if the subject was born with consistency, that is, born without desire. You would never acquire motivation. The motivation to eat, as you desire not to be full, the motivation to drink, as you don't desire to be quenched etc. In this sense, we may even tie in an approximation of humanism like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Desire is constantly changing its lack in the shape of ever-increasingly abstract notions, away from the biological imperatives that are now fulfilled.
Desire I feel is used as somewhat of a catch all term I prefer there are needs and desires. Needs can be fulfilled but desires stop being once they are. Example you can not be hungry and still know you need to eat I wouldn't consider that a desire to eat. Or you can be hungry and have a "desire" to eat to alleviate your hunger. The differentiation is conditional upon hunger. Likewise you may desire a woman and have sex with another and lose the initial desire for the first woman afterwards. It boils down to semantics was that a desire or just a need you fulfilled ?
Great video. This helps explain why I wanted my girlfriend to come over just to see how clean and organized my house was. Also, speaks to why I'd desire to leave this comment. What of ecstatic states and autotelic actions? When is desire a holistic outpouring of what is actually happening and not only a reaching out toward fictions bound up in egoic conceptualization?
yes, seeing oneself in a mirror is the most literal example, but any situation in which the child understands itself as an object constitutes the mirror stage, e.g. in language acquisition, or becoming the “i” as the dude in the video references
The celebrity that comes to mind, is Barbara Streisand. Close to 80, she's felt compelled to make yet ANOTHER comeback. An ambitious multi-media laden feature film about her long and storied career. 10 minutes in, I felt an anxiety attack building, larger than life images of her, her,her; every decade, every stage. An endeavor requiring a crew of HUNDREDS, being micromanaged by HER, including the poor husband. I think that subconsciously, it reactivated the memory of my mother, dragging me through Central Park in the blackest of night at age 6 to an outdoor performance . Who knows. As big a star as she became, she was rejected by Broadway AND Hollywood because she was considered very unattractive, and never got over it.
for Françoise Dolto it (the mirror) - I quote her - is an "omnireflective psychic surface." quote: "The type of pre-specular image: Whereas Lacan sees in it a fragmented image of the child's body, Dolto speaks of the cohesion of the body around the olfactory and visceral references, which she calls primordial narcissism. For Dolto, the pre-specular subject exists from conception, as she develops it in her concept of the unconscious image of the body (IIC). This is why, for her, the mirror stage is certainly a symbolic, real and imaginary structuring , but above all it is the final inscription of the subject in his biological body, an end, and not a beginning. "
reminds me of the Margaret Atwood quote:
"Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur."
i rarely comment but i have to now - im impressed, this is one of the few good explanations of lacan available on the internet. i got through a lot of them because im trying to understand his thought rn (at least a bit). so thank you so much for this video, it helped to connect everything!
so the pressure you felt from the audience to make a new video was actually your own gaze
It was not from the audience, unless you mean the one in my head
@@PlasticPills yep : )
Tf How'd you get the Lacan head
@@theyeking7023 Lacan head is a meme that dates way back when lol
@@DarkAngelEU no I meant how do you comment a Lacan head or whatever head
Thank 'The Big Other' for not removing the Jude Law clips
🙏
I Heart Huckabees is criminally underrated.
"Big Other"... Shoshana Zuboff ?
I've watched this video four times now and my understanding matures like a fine wine on each iteration. I wouldn't say I'm ready for reading Écrite just yet, there's plenty more that I'm reading to give myself a descent platform for comprehending this challenging subject matter - studying the basics of semiotics at the moment. That said, my one concern about the publication of this superior video was that it might be too much of a leap for someone encountering Lacan for the first time. What amazes me, is that Lacan has never been a walk in the park to comprehend; yet your videos have made the concepts unbelievably accessible to a layman such as I. Therefore, when I think about it, had I never seen your older video, I would have done exactly the same as I am currently doing. Understanding it a little more each time I watch the video. I think that's the wonderful thing with your videos; you explain the subject so well, that there is always a doorway to pass through instead of a barrier to entry. Thank you so much.
That's encouraging to hear, thank you
What did you read to give yourself a foundation? I’m very interested in Lacan (and Jung) and would like to do the same
Be sure of which translation you get…
yea, same... more times though... i think i nearly know it by heart. It's very good.
Yea I’m with you it’s impressive. Got any book recommendations just in general…
"'You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.' 'This is good
news?' 'It is the truth. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a
feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more
enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.' 'The burning
doesn't go away?' 'What fire dies when you feed it? It is not fame itself they
wish to deny you here. Trust them. There is much fear in fame. Terrible and
heavy fear to be pulled and held, carried. Perhaps they want only to keep it off
you until you weigh enough to pull it toward yourself.' 'Would I sound
ungrateful if I said this doesn't make me feel very much better at all?' 'LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old.
You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not
believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.' 'So I'm stuck in
the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There's no way out.'
'You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost,
awareness of the fact of the cage. And I believe I see a drop on your temple,
right ... there .... ' Etc."
-Lyle from the pump room (infinite jest pg 389.)
Time to eat your own face.
p good for a guy that licks sweat off ppl
I just have to hand it to you, you do a great job, both as a writer and a performer. The fact that you left in the “slip up” when you began addressing the Real is next-level smart as the accidental gaff, the stumble, the error, announces or “displays” (Wittgenstein) the Real. Thanks so much for doing these, I hope you get all the imaginary things you want!
The best video about Lacan ever.
Thank you for your coherent, detailed and creative explanations with examples and images that are actual for our (post)modern society.
You are one of the best teachers of te world wide Web.
Well I wasn't first, so I guess I was the first loser. Best Lacan videos and explanations on the web.
This... is so good. I am a 28 year old person and this kind of shifts my idea of the world and existence.
this video being a remake of an old video is an excellent demonstration of 'desire'
I love how all the advertisements on your videos on psychoanalysis are for self-help gurus, selling products to fulfill and resolve you. Zizek's hypothesis that the machine cannot tell coffee without cream from coffee without milk seems proven. What a funny world.
Just got into Lacan. Fascinating stuff
This channel deserves more views. Great work.
I've watched the old one at least four times over to try and fully soak it in. It was a (loud) window into something I'd never even heard of. It was amazing.
This one is even better.
Are you a poet??? Loud Window is a wonderful phrase.
I was listening, then when I heard "celebrity" automatically, an critically, Chris Cornell came to my mind... then everything unfolded, nice to find such coincidence. I'd choose peace over fame anytime, being blessed with talent, looks or even sheer luck can be a deadly trap for the self. Great work indeed!
"You gave me a life, now show me how to live."
Dude, ur videos have played a big part in my life lately. They answer so many questions I have. I’m promoting ur work in discord servers etc. u r awesome
For anybody who hasn’t already seen it “I heart Huckabees” is an absolute masterpiece, I love how you’ve referenced it multiple times in the original video and this one.
_I_ really enjoyed this. Just wanted this to be seen.
Great vid. Never had a problem with your visuals but they are definitely improving.
wow! Trying to understand Zitzen "The sublime object..." I stumbled across your podcast. Great stuff. Thank you very much. I just have to watch it like 3-4 times because the amount of information is huge. But I finally understand stuff
Thanks for breaking down one of the giants of the past century.
All of a sudden my unstable sense of self - one of the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, with which I’ve been diagnosed - doesn’t seem so bad, if no-one can ever realise their true self...
+1
I am generally opposed to psychiatry for exactly this reason. Your diagnosis becomes an identity - you are a BPD person, not a person with BPD, and your diagnosis becomes a biological explanation for your problems.
That’s before we get on to the political function of psychiatry as a tool of control; dissatisfaction with the society you live in becomes ‘depression’, which can be repressed (in every sense of the term) by being dosed with drugs. Alienation, transient consumer identity and the fragmented self become ‘BPD’. In the most obvious example, anxiety becomes an anxiety ‘disorder’. It individualises and medicalises affects that are at least exacerbated, if not produced, by society and social life.
We live with a ‘therapeutic’ state, where the resolution to your problems become a continual ‘openness’, in some cases to a psychiatrist (who prescribes the necessary remedy to change this problematic and unproductive neurotic into a productive member of society), but most commonly to the society itself. Your identification as a BPD person is pleasurable because it compels society to recognise your feelings of instability and impersonality, but that is all that is done - these feelings are recognised, but they are recognised as symptoms to be treated, not as genuine affective states. The habit of putting your diagnoses in your Twitter bio is obviously in the first instance just another transient identity to attach yourself to, but it also functions as a kind of parasocial therapy, a cathartic act of disclosure - but one that permits your feelings to be medicalised and dismissed, instead of meaningfully considered and analysed.
This is not to say that some psychiatric diagnoses don’t actually describe a biochemical reality, but as Mark Fisher puts it: the problem to be addressed is not that you have low levels of serotonin, but the thing that is causing you to have low levels of serotonin. Psychiatry in its current form is just another tool of regulation and control, another counterbalance of capital that dampens its psychologically destructive effects through literal (chemically or socially enforced) mind control.
Some psychiatry is necessary, but most of it is BS.
@@rmcewan10 100% its all made up...and there is a strange zoomer fetishization for being othered into some cognitive abnormal group so they gain externalized specialization to assuage the void within them left by reification and alienation....
Marcuse and Eric Fromm really nailed this one....
@@daniel-zh4qc I’m a zoomer who has only really got interested and involved in politics and social media over the past year or two, and I am taken aback by how bad things actually are. I’ve seen people castrating themselves (with evidence) for ‘feminism and BLM’, I’ve seen what may well have been real children tagging themselves as ‘MAP-friendly’, I’ve seen kids in the single digits being encouraged to transition; idpol and the whole cultural complex of purging the slightest dissent from the mainstream (always bourgeois) ideology on the left, and at the same time a revitalised and resurgent openly fascist right; it’s like the worst fever dream of Mark Fisher mixed with the worst prognostications of Deleuze and Guatarri. I’m just dumbfounded.
I cling to the vague hope that there might still be some disruptive potential in this generation, if only because for us political extremism (more left than right thankfully, but still too often lib left) is the norm, but at this point I’m ready to embrace some form of Left-Accelerationism. Our discourse and politics is so utterly bizarre, so unpredictable, so authentically schizophrenic, at this point I don’t really know what else there is.
Neurodiverse Gang ✌✌
I have a tremendous difficulty in recognizing myself in mirrors and photographs. I have no idea what this means. It started about 6 years ago following an incredibly traumatic event. I've heard people describe "ego death" and that sounds like what I experienced. Even my memories before the event feel like a movie.
That sounds like dissociation not ego death
Animals have trouble recognizing themselves in the mirror so don't sorry the ability to see ourselves in the mirror came later in evolution
You still have a conception of yourself, an image that exists regardless of the visual image--to me, in agreement with a previous comment, this seems more like a dissociation from the visual image that is "yourself," something that I also experience although there exists not some traumatic event, some Real intruding into my imaginary and symbolic structures... I should read more.
@@latioswarr3785 My cat simply ignores mirror images of herself and sniffs the mirror. What does that say about my cat?
That sounds like Depersonalization/Derealization which can be caused by trauma, maybe speak to a professional
revision came out brilliant, nice work
Reminds me of this quote:
“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride
I've always been quite struck by how, as you put it, the "anxieties" of this thought process are something I've experienced, and this was the first quote I saw that put it to words so literally, but I can see the mapping of an idealized Self that I Desire onto some Image that I got from media, and how that gap will never be closed because, of course, the Image was just an Image, and not a Me that I could ever really "be".
im happy to know im not the only one who capitalizes philosophical terminology regardless of grammar, it helps me wrap my dumb brain around it lol
You are very enlightening my brother, keep up the good work.
What is this production quality?? It is THROUGH the roof.
"Masquerade" had me expecting some inclusion of Lacan's formulas of sexuation, but you were using it in the conventional sense. It is notable, however, that the "masquerade" you reference is actually the masculine imposture of the phallic function rather than the feminine masquerade, which invites one to see what is behind the mask, which is nothing, the very lack of the barred subject. Your brief discussion of the gaze was excellent and gave me a sudden insight that in a way triggered something of my own feeble autoanalysis. I would comment that Lacan's discussion of the gaze is no little reference to Merleau-Ponty but quite a big one! Looking forward to that video.
Goddamn. I'm shocked... you saw the part of the script that I cut from that?
@@PlasticPills I had been studying it recently, so it was top of mind, I suppose. I think a video from you cutting across castration, the phallus, and the formulas of sexuation would be excellent. That topic, "there is no sexual relationship", badly needs an expression digestible to the non-specialist. It's click-baity too.
@Josh Smith Don't be such a BIIIAAc-- I mean, UwU
@Josh Smith Zizek is not good for understanding sexuation, try with Genevieve Morel "sexual ambiguities", Its a good book
Half way through this vid, liked and subscribed. I’ve been trying to learn about psychoanalysis these past few months and couldn’t understand many things. This vid clears up so much for me. Thank you! Love from Taiwan ♥️
Does anybody know the history of the Lacan-hegel axis ?
I was thinking exactly the same!!
Check Jacques-Alain Miller’s Introductions to the seminars, he gives a bit of reasons why Lacan and Hegel are intertwined (for a (fundamental) lack of a better word).
@@mehdikhafaji2683 Thank you very much. I really mean it :)
@@mehdikhafaji2683 thank you much appreciated, I always pondered the Genesis and how Źiźek seemingly came to reconcile the two in his works.
The key bottleneck is Alexandre Kojève's lectures in Paris (which Lacan, Sartre, and Merleu-Ponty all attended when they were youngins). The lectures are published in "Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit."
5 minutes in and can already tell this will be a great video
I heart that Jude Law line. Great film. Thanks for the content. Just discovering Lacan through psychotherapeutic training. THE SOUND IS GREAT
Dude you are great man, thank you for your work
Thank you for another clear and cool video.
Maybe one on Lacan's concept of the Sinthome? Seems like it's not tackled that often despite it being of vital importance.
Just discovered your channel and i must say it's excellent! Production is great, the videos are easy to follow and you are entertaining enough to keep my interest but not over the top to make it silly. Very well done man. Thank you!
The content always prime but I have so much respect for all the talent and effort that goes into the editing. :)
You've done a great thing here.
brilliant video thanks! I've been struggling with these thoughts recently and this has been very useful in helping me understand desire
Thanks for the video. I think combining Lacan and Schopenhauer leads to wonderful places.
As an artist, the imaginary audience and critics are very real. Although I image myself as a child in that crowd thinking that the person I am now as the coolest man ever, the person I actually am now is always fighting mediocrity.
Incredibly difficult subject, thank you for attempting.
This reminds me of buddhism.
I wonder if the 5 aggregates could be lined up with the 3 registers?
Dude, seriously, just keep doing these videos and one day you'll see your subscriber count blow up.
Great video btw. It told me what I needed to know at the time I most needed to know it.
I really liked this whole thing about celebrity as an example of an image of "completeness" regarding desire. I know psychoanalysis relates mainly to Freud, but this made me think of Adler and his whole thing of turning desire on its head and asserting that every moment actually is "complete" if we so allow in relation to his other ideas. Maybe I've missed the mark but it might be another angle to approach this sort of thinking from.
I Must say, i found the old videos absolutely excellent. But its nevertheless great, whenever a lacan video arises out of plastic pills.
I liked the content a lot.Your sense of humour helps too...
So basically, the chap who invented the mirror is the progenitor of all our unfulfilled anxieties.
So God then? Since there are mirrors in water...😮
No, because the idea of the mirror or the role it plays in a person formulating their respective self would come about regardless. The mirror stage had to come before the mirror just in a different vehicle
hahahaha. After reading Lacan this week I came to the exact same conclusion. What the fuck Richard!
This is something we all have to read, im going to, i love your videos man thanks
I wanted a really good video on Lacan and this is perfect. Many thanks. My life is now complete.
i cried through most of this. the illustrations with the pyramid shape and the triangle of real-symbolic-imaginary remind me heavily of things i was furiously writing down and drawing this summer,
8:40 never complete self 10:30 celebrities and dialectic of recognition
14:30 symbol, imaginary /desire, real
I love this so much, thank you for sharing and putting all this work into your life and this video
I love your content, thanks for putting up such a effort. I really appreciate it.
Hello, congrats for this great video. I would just add that watching it, one could think that Lacan is a very abstract and theoretical thinker. One should add that he also is a very attentive reader of many other great authors, in psychoanalysis, surely Freud, but also Jones, Balint, Klein, and so on, in philosophy, in art, and that his reflexion connects with many cultural and historical references, which gives a very interesting perspective to his thinking. In his seminaries he also described the analytical praxis a huge lot, and commented lots of cases described by others...So aside his general ideas, there are many many interesting things to discover in his work, because this is absolutely not the kind of theorician who exposes an idea and builds a very structured argumentation to support it. On the contrary, he tries to make others understand his conceptions from within the questions...Which gives his works a real complexity, one cannot read them ”half-minded”, it requires a lot of concentration. But it is also really brilliant in many occurrences...
The Lacanian Chad strikes again
Celebreties are imaginary yeah. The chad is real though. I mean, look at him.
Inevitably in every life the illusion we project onto the Real begins breaking down and we begin noticing absurd coincidences and paradoxical behavior. The question is how long will you cling to that small fragment of the real you call yourself before you embark on the journey of enlightenment to experience and thereby understand all that is, all that was, and all that can be. Life is about experiencing all of it so that you can become complete and then do it all over again when you inevitably decide to replay the cosmic song and dance along
I appreciate learning about Lacan in this video. The use of mirror imagery is ever so clever relating to the drive in the pursuit of the gap of the 'I' without people being consciously aware of it; and the ensuing suffering as a result of never ending pursuit in one's life. While desire, delusion, illusion, anxiety, phenomenology are plentifully covered in buddhist literatures and expressed in the simplest terms as the Four Noble Truth for 2000 years, advertisement and social media continue to manipulate a lot of people with increasing effeciency. That industry has a upperhand in fostering desires with a sweet coating, as illustrated by this video. Are we the helpless consumers without care about the health of our planet?
That was very good and very dense.
Lacan, as interpreted by Plastic Pills, provides a theory, a framework for characterizing and making sense of the behaviors and expressions of people in a general sense. As for any theory we would ask: To what degree is it accurate? What inaccuracies may there be? What value judgments are being made? Can the characterized behaviors and expressions be seen in usefully alternate ways?
My initial impression is that the theory characterizes many aspects of human behavior well. But as with any theory of behavior, it is a kind of template overlaid on quite complex behavior. We would need to be careful in assuming a theory as necessarily true and then trying to fit complex behavior into small boxes to support the truth of a theory already accepted.
These theories are more useful in pointing the way. Sometimes the pointed way loses cohesion. Is that confusion because we misunderstood the theory, because we applied the theory improperly, that the theory does not apply in this circumstance, or that we need a better theory?
In a theory like this and similarly for Freud’s ideas, because of their professions, are we dealing with individuals whose behaviors are not all that common in the general population? Severe neurosis is something to be treated but commonplace neurosis could be seen as healthy for the individual and society.
Saying there is some fault in how humans perceive themselves and their reality does not necessarily follow from the simple observation that humanity in terms of population and adaptation are doing very well, perhaps too well on some measures.
Apparently the idea is that when we understand ourselves according to Lacan’s theory that that will somehow help us avoid pitfalls the theory identifies. That there is someway to rise above these more automatic reactions and less useful behavior modalities. Except that the video implication is that though we may understand and be able to see that the theory applies to ourselves that, however, we can not escape to any significant degree. The impression from the video appears to be that we can work to minimize excesses identified by the theory and have overall better mental health even though we are still bound by it.
That might work if we do not get too tightly bound by Lacan, in getting neurotic about being neurotic.
Well, one has to consider that Lacan has had almost no impact on serious psychologists or psychiatrists. He's largely a humanities interest and read by people without training.
@@sfoperathat couldn't be further from the truth
Great video man. I would be curious to hear what Lacan's (and your) thoughts are on Buddhism.
I don't know where he said it but I believe Lacan said something along the lines of "Buddhism is the best of the East". Not sure if he ever wrote or spoke much dealing with Buddhism as a subject of study. Plenty has been written by others trying to reconcile the two.
But watching this video got me thinking about Buddhism myself. There is certainly a strong correlation between this PlasticPillsian 'we need to accept unquenched desire as fundamental to our being' and the Buddhist 'we need to accept impermanence as fundamental to our being' or something like that.
The Lacanian real can abruptly destroy one's coordinates (ie traumatic or just plain absurd events like a stage actor laughing too loudly for too long during a play). This is kind of like how meditations on the impermanence of objects, bodies, and processes has the effect of restructuring your reality itself. Your underlying fantasies which restrain the Lacanian real are broadened in a gentle way instead of all at once like trauma/absurdity. Letting reality in gently to subsume the desiring ego, rather than reality abruptly harming the ego as life so regularly does.
Same! Definitely got me thinking about the paradox of seeking or “desiring” nirvana, to be free from these desires. Does achieving nirvana mean to be a “complete” thing? Idk this is all cool to ponder but as I get older I realize the best thing is to just cruise through life smooth brain style
Thank you (or the projection of yourself that you're creating out of your desire to be seen)
Fucking fantastic. This is a very well done video. The editing is incredible. And, you demonstrate a superb understanding of very complex material. I’m subscribed.
Same
Just in time when I need to learn this for class, perfect timing, thank you mr Pills :) had to read a primary text on the mirror stage, couldn't take out 1 thing out of it
I'm commenting only to be read.
Weird because I'm blue...daba di daba da
Brilliantly done!
You and epoch philosophy are killing me and by me i mean it and by it i mean my mental life
I've learned all that in my years of psychedelics. It feels like semantic knowledge is limited and castrated through language itself. Even what we're seeing in this video is imaginary. The video, the voice, everything becomes an imaginary of what all of these theories are actually talking about (the unnamable experience). This unity to see the real as a multifaced, multidimensional thing that is both form and untangible, happening in the past, present, and future at the same time. Feeling is the closest I call to reaching the "self.". I remember the voice in my head (the one from where your mind is reading this right now) saying, "I'm God." But what does that actually mean? The "self" "is" "God" as in a coherent form? That can't happen, for then, God is limited. The ego in this sense feels equally "wrong," for the identification experience wasn't with the outer world but with the inner, passing the "self" identification of the ego (my name and all social, desired, linguistical, sensory and perceptive experiences.).
33:10min meanting to save what brings stability.
At 6:32, what does he mean by "Repeat. Repeat. Repeat"? What is repeated?
Imagine its repeating the pattern. When you attain something desired and it doesn't make you whole happy fulfilled etc. Another object of desire takes it place, which in turn doesn't work. repeating over and over again. When people talk about being caught up in the human condition, this is a big part of what they mean it seems.
Consciousness falls under the complex systems category of 'strong emergence'.
Love it man keep going !!!
I really like your work mate. I'm very much into Jungian psychology, but recently I've been trying to branch out. Ecrits is almost impenetrable to me so far, and your videos are helping a lot. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I do find Lacan, from what I currently understand, incredibly bleak. I feel like a lot of his ideas might be applicable if you're a completely messed up person, but if you work hard in everything you do, including your relationships, are always trying to improve yourself, and keep well away from the toxicity of social media, consumerism etc, then why would you need someone to sit there telling you, 'You know, whatever you think you love about your girlfriend, you've just invented it, it doesn't exist; there's a hole in you that will never be filled and whatever you think you are, you're not'? I mean, how does that help you stand tall in the face of your own mortality and live a meaningful life?
@@jmah5553 That's a very interesting point mate. Thanks for your reply.
@@jackbarton4938what did they say?
@@jackbarton4938 what was @jmah5553's response?
Millions of great people have done great things in the face of this predicament. Happiness and meaning are not that important when one is compelled to do the work they’ve decided must be done. If you require “meaning” just make it up as you go and stop learning from the great thinkers that asked hard questions.
2:30 a subj.:
8:30 never complete
10:30 celebrities & dialectic of recognition
That was beautiful, thanks.
Bro i am a big fan. You came across much stronger in your ver.1. (the original)
Damn Good. Damn Good, I am waiting for more. Cheers
Great video! Thank you
So, what ever happend to "know thyself" Falling in love is a moment of understanding self and other...and a love affair will, eventually, indeed fill the emptyness within. I guarantee it. :)
24:37 what do you mean lacan;s version of castration is "algebraic" ?
Nice video! Would really appreciate a video on Lacan vs. Deleuze one at this point.
Can somebody give me feedback on my my amateur understanding of both?
Those partial objects and signifiers seem to be pretty close in their mechanics. While Deleuze would once more smash the triangle here (despotic signifiers), it would "reverse" the desire as a lack into a production right?
i second this, would love a video on lacan vs deleuze!
I don’t think we want a solution, like jouissance/ Freuds death drive we’re ‘happy’ when we dont quite have everything, endless desire without realising the truth. Celebrities are the sacrifices of our own complete desires, and often that ends tragically. We/ I prefer to live as a projection of an ideal rather than face inward and live knowing I can never know myself or be complete. Lacan kind of gives a roadmap, he doesnt give a solution because he understands most of us dont want to face the void and that’s just the human condition. Can’t wait for more!
thanks man good articulation on stuff
Simply brilliant!
Love the channel. The original Lacan was eye opening for me in a lot of important ways. This one is an interesting reframing.
But, a word of critique...don't get too caught up in the bells and whistles. More fx does not equal better. In fact, they can distract from what you're trying to communicate. You could cut your render time in half and have a simpler, clearer presentation of your message. Find the balance.
Just my 2c
nice man.good job.hard things to explain :P keep up ,)
I think Lacan was inspired by Sartre when it comes to these ideas of lack and that we are always projecting ourselves outwards (Lacan once said that everyone should read "Being and Nothingness", and Sartre went to see Lacan when he had hallucinations of crabs after taking mescalin). But Sartre took these ideas from Heidegger, with the idea that Dasein is always outstanding, and that we are always reaching out towards the future.
8:30
To take a biological view on Lacan's desire:
A subject without negation would be dead. Imagine if the subject was born with consistency, that is, born without desire. You would never acquire motivation. The motivation to eat, as you desire not to be full, the motivation to drink, as you don't desire to be quenched etc. In this sense, we may even tie in an approximation of humanism like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Desire is constantly changing its lack in the shape of ever-increasingly abstract notions, away from the biological imperatives that are now fulfilled.
Desire I feel is used as somewhat of a catch all term I prefer there are needs and desires. Needs can be fulfilled but desires stop being once they are. Example you can not be hungry and still know you need to eat I wouldn't consider that a desire to eat. Or you can be hungry and have a "desire" to eat to alleviate your hunger. The differentiation is conditional upon hunger. Likewise you may desire a woman and have sex with another and lose the initial desire for the first woman afterwards. It boils down to semantics was that a desire or just a need you fulfilled ?
Thanks . The Cambridge companion to lacan p. 29 documents that lacan ‘ mirror stage was a steal from wallon (27)/and block( 28)
I was already having a good day and now I watched this ..How do you guys cope with this ?
Its fun!
Sure i love plastic pills videos and got me more into philosophy butthe more i study about this topics the more depressed i get
@@aggelosvasilis7457 What is it that gets you depressed specifically?
Great video. This helps explain why I wanted my girlfriend to come over just to see how clean and organized my house was. Also, speaks to why I'd desire to leave this comment. What of ecstatic states and autotelic actions? When is desire a holistic outpouring of what is actually happening and not only a reaching out toward fictions bound up in egoic conceptualization?
The minute you tell me desire is lack I immediately see that as nihilistic. Which is why I vibe with deleuze and Nietzsche.
I assume initial self-recognition doesn't literally hinge on seeing one's reflection.
yes, seeing oneself in a mirror is the most literal example, but any situation in which the child understands itself as an object constitutes the mirror stage, e.g. in language acquisition, or becoming the “i” as the dude in the video references
I mean eventually (if there were no mirrors) you would probably assume that you are like other people without having the full contextual image.
...uuh ah...WOW. Insufficient comment for such analysis. Dude great job and thank you.
Not even 6 minutes in and I get slapped in the face by a "I Heart Huckabees" reference. This is gonna be good.
I hope you keep the first video as well
Great job here!
This is a fire intorduction
The celebrity that comes to mind, is Barbara Streisand.
Close to 80, she's felt compelled to make yet ANOTHER comeback.
An ambitious multi-media laden feature film about her long and storied career. 10 minutes in, I felt an anxiety attack building, larger than life images of her, her,her; every decade, every stage.
An endeavor requiring a crew of HUNDREDS, being micromanaged by HER, including the poor husband.
I think that subconsciously, it reactivated the memory of my mother, dragging me through Central Park in the blackest of night at age 6 to an outdoor performance . Who knows. As big a star as she became, she was rejected by Broadway AND Hollywood because she was considered very unattractive, and never got over it.
"The awakened and knowing say: body I am entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body."
Friedrich Nietzsche
for Françoise Dolto it (the mirror) - I quote her - is an "omnireflective psychic surface."
quote: "The type of pre-specular image: Whereas Lacan sees in it a fragmented image of the child's body, Dolto speaks of the cohesion of the body around the olfactory and visceral references, which she calls primordial narcissism. For Dolto, the pre-specular subject exists from conception, as she develops it in her concept of the unconscious image of the body (IIC). This is why, for her, the mirror stage is certainly a symbolic, real and imaginary structuring , but above all it is the final inscription of the subject in his biological body, an end, and not a beginning. "