The Imaginary

The Imaginary (or Imaginary Order) is one of three terms in the psychoanalytic perspective of Jacques Lacan, along with the Symbolic and the Real. Each of the three terms emerged gradually over time, undergoing an evolution in Lacan's own development of thought. "Of these three terms, the 'imaginary' was the first to appear, well before the Rome Report of 1953…[when the] notion of the 'symbolic' came to the forefront." Indeed, looking back at his intellectual development from the vantage point of the 1970s, Lacan epitomised it as follows: "I began with the Imaginary, I then had to chew on the story of the Symbolic ... and I finished by putting out for you this famous Real." Accordingly, as Hoens and Puth (2004) express, "Lacan's work is often divided into three periods: the Imaginary (1936–1953), the Symbolic (1953–1963), and the Real (1963–1981)." Regarding the former, "Lacan regarded the 'imago' as the proper study of psychology and identification as the fundamental psychical process. The imaginary was then the…dimension of images, conscious or unconscious, perceived or imagined." It would be in the decade or two following his 1936 delivery of Le stade du miroir at Marienbad that Lacan's concept of the Imaginary was most fully articulated. The Imaginary Order The basis of the Imaginary order is the formation of the ego in the "mirror stage." By articulating the ego in this way, "the category of the imaginary provides the theoretical basis for a long-standing polemic against ego-psychology" on Lacan's part. Since the ego is formed by identifying with the counterpart or specular image, "identification" is an important aspect of the imaginary. The relationship, whereby the ego is constituted by identification, is a locus of "alienation,"—another feature of the imaginary—and is fundamentally narcissistic: thus Lacan wrote of "the different phases of imaginary, narcissistic, specular identification – the three adjectives are equivalent," which make up the ego's history.