Lacan Theory

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a french psychoanalyst and psychologist who expanded upon the works created by his predecessor Sigmund Freud. Lacan's work influenced many of the top intellectuals of his time and continue to do so. His works covered a wide variety of topics, but its his hypothesis about our intrinsic lack that i will focus on. 

The theory revolves around the idea that we, as humans, are never complete. We are born with a void within us that will never be truly filled. Every action we take in our lives is an unconscious attempt to fill this void. As Lacan puts it 
"Desire is a relation to being to lack. The lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It is not the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the being exists.“

We can clearly see Freuds influence in this theory, the ego drives the actions of the self, usually from a position of want, a need for something rather than random actions. the lack within lacans theory is 
essentially the ego with Freuds theory.

Lacan recognises three different kinds of lack within us all, According to the nature of the object which is lacking. The first is Symbolic Castration, the second is Imaginary Frustration and the third kind of lack is Real Privation. The three corresponding agents are the Real Father, the Symbolic Mother, and the Imaginary Father. Of these three forms of lack, castration is the most important from the perspective of the cure.  Lacan viewed castration as a fantasy of the mutilation of the penis, linking it with a series of fantasies of bodily mutilations which begin with the image of the fragmented body, possibly an unconscious fantasy to punish oneself for never being truly whole. 


The mirror stage is also key in discussing how we are intrinsically born with a lack, an infant less than 15 months old cannot physically recognise there own reflections, they see however an almost objective perfection in there reflection. Subconsciously we always try to become this perfect reflection, by never can do due to our intrinsic self punishment. this is essentially why we all suffer from lack, we spend our lives trying to fill the void that we think will complete us, however no matter what we do we can never live up to the image we saw as children.

As show in Lacans “lack” and “Mirror Phrase” theories, Freud has excessive amount of effect on Lacan.
In most of Lacan’s theories, we can effortlessly see Freud's influence in them. Lacan's "return to Freud" emphasised a renewed attention to the original texts of Freud, including radical critiques of Freuds work. 

Lacan- 4 our film challenge