1. Jacques Lacan argued that narcissism is fundamental to the human psyche and that appeals to rationality and morality will not ensure that people will do the right thing. He was critical of ego psychology's focus on the ego rather than the unconscious. 2. For Lacan, the ego is a symptom, not the seat of reason. It is inherently deceptive and the source of resistance in analysis. The unconscious emerges from the gap between perception and consciousness. 3. Lacan's theory of narcissism is based on the ego having an erotic charge and the shifting of libido between the ego and objects. The anticipatory nature of the Lacanian subject arises from the mirror phase of development.

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CLINICAL NOTES SERIES (October 2016)
JACQUES LACAN ON NARCISSISM AND THE EGO
Ellie Ragland (1995). ‘Lacan’s Theories on Narcissism and the Ego,’ Essays on the
Pleasures of Death: From Freud to Lacan (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 17-53.
INTRODUCTION
Jacques Lacan was fond of arguing that narcissism is irreducible in the human
psyche - that is why the humanist approach to interpersonal relations is not what we
expect it to be. The subject is preoccupied unconsciously with Eros rather than with
the Good. The humanist model presupposes that appeals to the Good will ensure
that everybody will do the right thing but that is often not the case. Ellie Ragland’s
account of what Lacan had to say about narcissism and the ego is therefore relevant
to making sense of how to apply psychoanalysis in the clinic and in everyday life.
Those who are not prepared to come to terms with this analytic precept will become
disappointed in their attempts to make things better for themselves and others. That
is why Lacan was critical of attempts made by ego psychologists to situate reason in
the locus of the ego. This preoccupation with the ego means that Freud’s essential
discoveries about the unconscious are repressed both in theory and in practice. The
main point of Lacanian psychoanalysis is to restore the unconscious as the main
object of theoretical analysis and clinical interventions. It is only if the analysts are
focused on the laws governing the unconscious that they can hope to cure the
patient. The ego, whether the patient knows it or not, is the locus of resistance to the
cure since it is inherently self-deceptive; it is only in the clinical transference that the
patient can come to terms with the ‘ego fictions’ that constitute his psyche.1 Thinking
in terms of the ego in lieu of the unconscious will invariably reduce psychoanalysis
1 See, for instance, Jacques Lacan (1978, 1988). The Seminarof Jacques Lacan: The Ego in Freud’s
Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955, Book II, translated by Sylvana
Tomaselli, notes by John Forrester, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press).

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to a form of behaviourism. It will also mean that analysts will wind up thinking in
terms of symptoms rather than relate symptoms to their underlying fantasy. It is the
failure to relate the symptom to fantasy that serves as an important source of
misunderstanding in clinical interpretation. That is why a number of patients can
have the same symptom but attribute different, or even conflicting meanings, to
these symptoms. It is therefore important for an analyst to proceed on a case by case
basis whether he is interpreting a symptom, a dream, or any other formation of the
unconscious by using the patient’s associations to the object of interpretation. The
meaning of these ‘formations of the unconscious’ depends on the associations that a
patient comes up with on the couch and cannot be looked up in a book.2
THE EGO IS A SYMPTOM
The ego itself, for Lacan, is the most privileged of human symptoms rather than the
locus of reason. In this approach, the unconscious is that which emerges in the ‘gap’
between perception and consciousness. Furthermore, all communication takes on an
element of ‘miscommunication’ like all attempts to understand the world are subject
to ‘misrecognition.’3 The ego is not whole but split between the ego ideal and the
ideal ego. The ego is also not as synthetic in its function as it was originally thought
to be. The ego’s attempts to identify with objects in the world are mediated by the
orders of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic. The three categories that
correspond to these orders in terms of object relations constitute privation,
frustration, and castration. The Lacanian model of the ego is articulated in the
context of a theory of narcissism. This term was borrowed from Havelock Ellis by
Freud who patterned it after the Greek myth of Narcissus. This term is also linked to
the notion of eroticism because the ego has an erotic charge. An important challenge
for Freud, in his theory of narcissism, is related to how ego libido and object libido
relate to each other.4 Freud was fond of arguing that every subject must eventually
2 The formations of the unconscious are ‘condensation, displacement, secondary revision,
and conditions of representability.’ They are explained in Sigmund Freud (1900, 1991). ‘The
Dream Work,’ translated by James Strachey and edited by Angela Richards, The
Interpretation of Dreams, Vol. 4 (London: Penguin Books), Penguin Freud Library, pp. 381-
651.
3 See, for instance, Dylan Evans (1996, 1997). ‘Ego,’ An Introductory Dictionary of
Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 50-51. For an exhaustive account of
this term, see Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973, 1988). ‘Ego,’ The Language of
Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel Lagache
(London: Karnac Books), pp. 130-143.
4 Sigmund Freud (1914, 1991), ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction,’ translated by James
Strachey and edited by Angela Richards, On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis,
Vol. 11 (London: Penguin Books), The Penguin Freud Library, pp. 59-98. See also Charles

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fall in love to some extent in order to avoid falling ill. Otherwise, ego libido will dam
up in his psyche making it difficult for the subject to work it through sufficiently.
The shifting patterns of libido from ego to object are also invoked to explain the
libidinal economy to which an individual is subject to in various phases of his illness
or his life. Every neurosis necessarily involves a disturbance in the forms of libidinal
expression that are permissible to the subject and in his or her ability to sublimate
the affects involved. Freud’s theories of ‘mourning and melancholia’ are also
understood in terms of the investment and withdrawal of libido from objects in the
world when they become unavailable.5 The Freudian theory of object choice is also
worth mentioning in this context given that the subject can either love something in
his own image as given in the narcissistic model or love somebody who loves, feeds,
and protects as explained in the anaclitic model.6
THE ANTICIPATORY SUBJECT
Narcissism is usually divided into primary and secondary narcissism. The former
relates to ‘new-borns, psychotics, and those depressed or in mourning.’ Secondary
narcissism however relates to situations in which a gap emerges between the id and
ego. The main function of the ego is identification with imagoes and objects in the
world; these objects could also be part objects. The ego is also defined as mainly a
bodily ego because it concerns the projection of the surface of the subject’s body. The
main difference between ego psychology and Lacanian theory is the epistemic
question of whether the ego is a reliable source of knowledge about the self and the
world.7 Lacan argues that the ego is invariably the site of misrecognition. This stems
from the distortions that constitute the imaginary in the wake of the mirror phase in
which the subject tries to make up for a lack of adequate motor co-ordination by
anticipating a sense of being in the future to make up for what is missing in the
Rycroft (1995).‘Narcissism,’ A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books),
p. 107.
5 Sigmund Freud (1917, 1991) ‘Mourning and Melancholia,’ translated by James Strachey
and edited by Angela Richards, On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 11
(London: Penguin Books), The Penguin Freud Library, pp. 245-268.
6 See Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973, 1988). ‘Object-Choice,’ TheLanguage of
Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel Lagache
(London: Karnac Books), p. 277.
7 For an introduction to ego psychology, see Franz Alexander (1966, 1973). ‘Development of
the Ego Psychology,’ The First Freudians, edited by Hendrik M. Ruitenbeck (New York: Jason
Aronson, Inc.), pp. 222-233. See also Rudolph M. Loewenstein (1957). ‘Some Thoughts on
Interpretation in the Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis,’ Psychoanalytic Clinical
Interpretation, edited by Louis Paul (London: The Free Press), pp. 162-188.

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present.8 This gap between ‘wanting and being’ is not a temporary phase, but will go
on to constitute the anticipatory form of subjectivity that characterizes the Lacanian
subject. For Lacan, then, the forms of identification and the misrecognition that are
inherent to the mirror phase can become a source of psycho-pathology later in the
developmental trajectory of the subject. The function of the object in relation to the
ego is important for Lacan because the subject not only identifies with the object a,
but conceives of the ego itself as an object in states of narcissism. Another meaning
of the term ‘object’ is the aim of the subject’s desire; the object of desire in that sense
is desire itself. In other words, there is something inherently self-reflexive in desire;
what desire seeks is to keep itself alive rather than to obtain any particular object in
the empirical world.9
The Lacanian theory of psychosis is based on the narcissistic structure of the ego.10
His main contention is that the psychotic ego is not subject to change; it is non–
dialectical. Lacan also mentions the importance of understanding the imago of the
‘fragmented body’ in psychotic states and in differentiating between psychotic and
paranoid forms of narcissism. In psychosis, the gap between the ideal ego and ego
ideals has not emerged; so, the subject winds up conflating these categories in his
psyche. That is also why the psychotic does not have an unconscious like neurotics
do. The unconscious, to reiterate, emerges in the gap between the ideal ego and the
ego ideal. This gap is missing for psychotics.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN
8 See Jacques Lacan (1949). ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as
Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,’ Écrits: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan
(London: Tavistock/Routledge), pp. 1-7.
9 See Bruce Fink (1997, 1999). ‘Desire and Psychoanalytic Technique,’ A Clinical Introduction
to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), pp. 1-74.
10 See Dylan Evans (1996, 1997). ‘Psychosis,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
(London and New York: Routledge), pp. 154-157.