Imaginary is the world of images and fantasies. It consists of illusion, fascination, and seduction (Evans, 2001), woven as a layer over the real, as in a defense (Verhaeghe, 1999) to keep real where it is. As far as the Lacanian formulation goes, Imaginary consists the fantasy/psychic reality aspect of the Freudian psychoanalysis. It is about the hysteric’s fantasies about love for the father and seduction, or the terror of Wolf Man in response to his image of the cut finger in relation to his fantasy about castration. It is also the “phantasy” of the Kleinian psychoanalysis.

Identification is part of the imaginary order as well, as part of the imaginary identification. The mirror stage, as a developmental stage, which is, for the subject, perception and realization of the image as his/her own image, results for the subject in the identification of the subject with his/her (mirror) image. This image becomes the image where the personal features are attributed. This (imaginary) image provides the formation of the ego, and alienates at the same time (Lacan, SIII, 146), which also will be a rudimentary basis for the individual in his later identifications with his love objects.

However, though, “the imaginary also involves a linguistic dimension. Whereas the signifier is the foundation of the symbolic order, the signified and signification are part of the imaginary order” (Evans, 2001). “The imaginary is decipherable only if it is rendered into symbols” (Lacan, 1956, 269).

YASEMIN DINC

 

References:

EVANS, D. (2001). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. NY: Brunner-Routledge.

LACAN, J. (1993). The Psychoses: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan 1955-1956 (Seminar III). MILLER, J-A. ed. (translated by Russell Grigg). London: Routledge.

LACAN, J. (1656) Fetishism: the symbolic, the imaginary and the real (with W. GRANOFF), in BALINT, M. (ed.) Perversions: Psychodynamics and Therapy, New York: Random House, London: Tavistock. pp. 265-76

VERHAEGHE, P. (1999). Does the Woman Exist? From Freud’s Hysteric to Lacan’s Feminine (translated by Marc du Ry). London: Rebus Press