Lacan Theory
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who came from a religious family but instead of following that religion he was an atheist, stopping believing in the ideals of god at a young age and instead became obsessed with philosophy and mathematics; even going on to study medicine and specialise in psychiatry at university. Lacan wrote many essays and published transcripts of the seminars he gave and presented his ideas in complex ways and and often used mathematical equations and diagrams to explain them. Lacan made some great understanding to the complexity of humans.
He was deeply interested in the ideal of children minds and even delved into what he called the mirror phase; the idea the first time a child recognises themselves in the mirror and having the moment of knowing its them. The mirror phase can be quite unsettling because the face in the mirror doesn't always look as we humans feel.
This concept meaning that on the inside we are full of many different things and have a wide stream of consciousness; made up of speeding thoughts, desires and images. As humans we're chaotic, ever-changing and ambivalent to the core. However on the outside we seem like stable entities with composed features that portray almost nothing about whats going on within. Theres only words to be able to describe how we feel but most of the time they fail to do justice to our real intentions.
In conclusion the image in the mirror is far more one dimensional than the entity that beholds it. This can lead to a problem that follows humans throughout life and not just stay in the childhood. As adults humans long for other to understand us in the deepest ways but Lacans theory prepares us to face the darker possibility that people you encounter will be stuck on the outside of us and assuming us to just be as you seem to the eye and nothing more. This can lead to humans changing who they are entirely by changing their appearance to appear one way other than what they really are on the outside. For example the whole fashion industry rides on this due to humans changing their external appearances, tinkering with what people see such as hair or the design of clothes in hopes that eventually we will be properly understood.
However Lacan's theory suggests a difficult and somewhat more mature move: that we accept that other people will never experience us the way we experience ourselves and that us as humans will be almost entirely misunderstood and therefore will in turn almost entirely misunderstand.
He was deeply interested in the ideal of children minds and even delved into what he called the mirror phase; the idea the first time a child recognises themselves in the mirror and having the moment of knowing its them. The mirror phase can be quite unsettling because the face in the mirror doesn't always look as we humans feel.
This concept meaning that on the inside we are full of many different things and have a wide stream of consciousness; made up of speeding thoughts, desires and images. As humans we're chaotic, ever-changing and ambivalent to the core. However on the outside we seem like stable entities with composed features that portray almost nothing about whats going on within. Theres only words to be able to describe how we feel but most of the time they fail to do justice to our real intentions.
In conclusion the image in the mirror is far more one dimensional than the entity that beholds it. This can lead to a problem that follows humans throughout life and not just stay in the childhood. As adults humans long for other to understand us in the deepest ways but Lacans theory prepares us to face the darker possibility that people you encounter will be stuck on the outside of us and assuming us to just be as you seem to the eye and nothing more. This can lead to humans changing who they are entirely by changing their appearance to appear one way other than what they really are on the outside. For example the whole fashion industry rides on this due to humans changing their external appearances, tinkering with what people see such as hair or the design of clothes in hopes that eventually we will be properly understood.
However Lacan's theory suggests a difficult and somewhat more mature move: that we accept that other people will never experience us the way we experience ourselves and that us as humans will be almost entirely misunderstood and therefore will in turn almost entirely misunderstand.
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