Lacan
Building on Freud, Lacan (1901-1981) was attracted to the chaos and isolation of human experience. Instead of attempting to neatly summarize the human mind, Lacan's structures are based on the concept of absence, of 'lack,' and of the inability of our structures to adequately communicate the realities we live.
Have you ever felt like you just didn't have the words to express how you really felt? How language itself can never possibly explain it, even if you knew every word in every language?
What about that 'missing' part of you, that part that you keep search to make you whole? You try and try to find it everywhere (people, places, video games, sports), but you just feel incomplete?
These are Lacanian experiences and, to him, humanity is destined to be infinitely dissatisfied and molded by the illusion of order and reality that language and other 'sybollic orders' bring.
This is going to get interesting!
Lit. Application Checklist
⭘ Longing for the objet petit a - characters' desires, longing, and the ways in which they are structured by fundamental (innate) lack.
⭘ Childhood Development and Mirror Stage - An infantile moment of recognition where a 'self' is created and alienated and isolated from the larger whole of the world
⭘ Imaginary Order - Feeling of safety associated with the 'mother' (in 21st century, mother as figure for nurturing and safety)
⭘ Symbolic Order - The 'symbols' or signs (linguistics) that we are indoctrinated into as we grow; think 'social constructs'
⭘ The Real - That which is exempt from the symbols language creates
⭘ The Trauma of the Real - The moment when our mean-making systems fail to provide the sense of safety and order we long for
⭘ Defer and Deference - Meaning of all words is actually 'defered' or pushed to the associations; no word means anything by itself
⭘ Metaphor and Metonymy - The 2 ways language gains meaning
⭘ Examine the role of language, symbols, and cultural norms in shaping characters' experiences and desires.
⭘ Explore characters' fantasies, illusions, and confrontations with reality through the lens of the imaginary and the real.
Strengths
Have a character longing for something? Or lacking a feeling of purpose and meaning? Slap Lacan on it!
Absolutely perfect when analyzing character or novels that explore existential themes or feelings of incompleteness
Different, complex, and nuanced
Linguistic emphasis with great overlaps with Derrida (deconstruction)
Excellent for disillusion
Weaknesses
Can be nebulous and highly theoretical, especially when compared to Adler's psychological model
Complex language that has modern alternatives (e.g. 'symbolic order' has basically been replaced with 'social constructs')
Tretyak's Commentary
Lacan is one of my personal favorite psychologists. However, I found that applying him is an act of temporary insanity or a deprivation of consciousness. This is my personal opinion section, so I will speak frankly: I do my best to understand him but the more I think about him, the less he makes sense. My typical application of Lacan looks like this: learn the terms and concepts, set a timer and write, black out, revive from my literary analysis comma surprised how awesome my ideas sound.
What I'm trying to say is this: Lacan is something you feel and intuitively apply, not something with a clear and structured guide. For this reason, I love it, for better and worse, for it is the destabilization of language and the structures that language creates. But as we write about literature, we are creating structures. This is the paradoxical nature of Lacan, and one that I feel fits literature and the human condition beautifully.