According to the psychoanalytic theory, identification itself becomes possible through the other.

Lacan formulates the first emergence of the ’I’ through the concept of “the mirror stage”. This I, “in its primordial form” serves for the individual a way out of the fragmentation and confusion regarding the initially uncertain boundaries of his/her self. The basic factor which makes this process possible is the other, who as the basic care giver serves as the reference point for the baby. The identification process “provides it (i.e. the baby) with a basis of fixity and anticipates physical motor co-ordination” through the mimicry of whom the subject will acquire his/her subjectivity (Lacan, 1949). This process becomes possible through the other.

For the baby, the ‘I’ that emerges, the perceived unity – the whole body of the image in the mirror – is accepted as his/her own figure, which the baby comes to identify with. This I becomes the very place where one can invest in his/her thoughts and feelings. This happens in spite of the apparent inability of the human child (who cannot yet stand on his/her own and has to be supported by the care giver), in spite and in stead of the sensation of fragility, helplessness, dependability and fragmentation. An imaginary unity is accepted; that is, the full image in the mirror.

Here, it is important to highlight two crucial points that are inherent as well as and unseparable characteristics of the identification process. Firstly, the very acceptance of the unitary image instead of the fragmented one is an active process of assuming an ideal ego. This very process itself should also be seen as a defensive act that has been constructed to serve as a veil over the fragility and neediness of the Real. Therefore, the very act of identification with the image aims simultaneously at substantializing an ‘I’ (ideal-ego) image of the subject; one also has to remember that it is the reversed, illusionary image.

Secondly, the process of identification becomes possible via the other. The baby takes on the image of the other even as it distances the subject from the other – which gives the subject a contingent ‘I’ that can be differentiated from other subjects (mother, father etc.). This process can occur only via a dependence on the other. To put it more concisely, the process of identification can only be possible with and through an other. The very intimate relationship with the other prevails during the secondary identification, that of the symbolic kind, with the ego-ideal (of the superego) that occurs during the so called Oedipal stage as well.

In summary, the process of identification, or in other words the formation of identity, requires an active process of, what I would call other-ing, a special form of separation from the other. Other-ing has been formulated with an –ing, in order to emphasize the active nature of the process. Starting from the earliest moment of identification onwards, it is the other – the primary caregiver- who accompanies the human child into becoming a member of the social human order. Ambivalence, the intermixture of love and hate at once and at the same time, is an inherent part of this process. This other is the one the baby needs and yet at the same time the one that comes to be associated with the unnameable bad sensations as the baby perceives them, i.e. hunger, pain, cold etc.- an association that arises out of simple contingency relations. The constitution of the self comes to be possible through the process where the self and other are separated, as the two sides of the same coin, where the perceived boundaries of the I are set, in a parallel and a simultaneous way with the boundaries of the other-body. It is also the separation of the inner vs. the outer, qua introjection and projection, where the good is taken in while the bad, painful, unbearable is left out. Again during the symbolic identification (in the Oedipal stage) a similar process of becoming something (for the male child, identification with the father figure) at the expense of something else (giving up the satisfaction the mother provides). In other words, becoming and separation occur simultaneously and as the two sides of the same coin.

For all these reasons, throughout the identification process as well as at all moments following this, the relationship between the I and the other is a very intimate relationship.

YASEMIN DINC

Lacan, J., (1949). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In Ecrits: A selection. Tr. Alan Sheridan. 2^nd ed. London: Tavistock.