1. This happens, for example, when commentators treat these premises as evidence of the radical (if unpalatable) "truth" of Lacan's work. Some commentators on Lacan ignore the fact that a narcissistic ontology is by definition self-enclosed and other excluding, hence not open to disproof within its own premises. Among the writers who are too uncritical of or are captured within Lacan's premises (and style), I would include Jane Gallop, The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982); Stuart Schneiderman, Jacques Lacan: The Death of an Intellectual Hero (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); Juliet Mitchell, "Introduction-I," and Jacqueline Rose, "Introduction-II,'' to Jacques Lacan, Feminine Sexuality , trans. Jacqueline Rose (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985). Catherine Clément, The Lives and Legends of Jacques Lacan , trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), presents a more distanced and complex view of Lacan's work. Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), is still very helpful in placing Lacan and his ideas in their historical and social context.

2. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection , trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 24.

3. Clément, The Lives , stresses the centrality of this concept within Lacan's work. See especially her discussion of the mirror stage on pp. 84-92. For Winnicott's view, see D. W Winmcott, "Mirror Role of Mother and Family in Child Development," in D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New York: Basic Books, 1971). In this essay Winnicott mentions Lacan's discussion of the same subject and some of his differences with Lacan. Heinz Kohut discusses the meanings and importance of mirroring extensively in his The Analysis of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1983), part 2.

4. Lacan, Ecrits , p. 2.

5. Ibid., p. 4.

6. Ibid., p.2.

7. Ibid., p. 4.

8. Ibid., pp. 5-6. Obviously, Lacan is drawing heavily on Hegel's ideas

here, especially Hegel's notions of dialectics and the "unhappy consciousness." Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind , trans. J. B. Baillie (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), part 3B. However, unlike Hegel, Lacan does not believe that any Aufhebung of this phase is possible. In Lacan's work self-consciousness can never go any further than a recognition of its permanently split (and stuck) state. See also Jacques Lacan, "The Subject and the Other: Aphanisis," in his The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis , trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 219-220.

9. Lacan, "The Meaning of the Phallus," in Lacan, Feminine Sexuality , pp. 80-81. My understanding of narcissism depends not only on Freud's account but also on the work of Kohut, Kernberg, and Masterson. In the work of the last three writers, narcissism is treated not as an ontological given but rather as a potentially pathological and changeable condition. On narcissism see Sigmund Freud, "On Narcissism: An Introduction," In his Collected Papers , vol. 4, trans. Joan Riviere, ed. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1959). This collection will be abbreviated in this chapter as CP . Kohut, Analysis of the Self ; Otto Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (New York: Jason Aronson, 1975), part 2; James F. Masterson, The Narcissistic and Borderline Disorders (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1981). Kohut also distinguishes between healthy and self-affirming forms of narcissism and pathological and self-isolating ones.

10. Jacques Lacan, "The Subject and the Other: Alienation," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 207.

11. Lacan, "The Meaning," in Lacan, Feminine Sexuality , p. 80. See also Jacques Lacan, "From Love to the Libido," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 188.

12. Lacan, "From Love," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 191.

13. Lacan, "The Meaning," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 79. My critique of Lacan's theory of language is derived partially from Hanna Pitkin's treatment of the parallel moves in social science toward nominalism, formalistic concepts, and a pseudo-emptying out or neutralizing of the social history and meanings of language and language use. See Hanna Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), especially chaps. 5-6, 10-11. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations , trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1970), presents a very different theory of language than that of Lacan. He too moves from a purely representational theory of language but locates subsequent discussions of language in relation to "forms of life," not an abstract, ahistoric "binary logic."

14. Lacan, "The Meaning," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 79.

15. Ibid., p. 78.

16. Ibid., p. 79. See also Lacan, "The Subject," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 203: "The Other is the locus in which is situated the chain of the signifier that governs whatever may be made present of the subject—it is the field of that living being in which the subject has to appear," and p. 207.

17. Lacan, "Seminar of 21 January 1975," in Lacan, Feminine Sexuality , p. 165.

18. Lacan, "The Subject," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 203.

19. Lacan, "The Meaning," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 78.

20. Jacques Lacan, "Guiding Remarks for a Congress on Feminine Sexuality," in Lacan, Feminine Sexuality , p. 91.

21. Lacan, "The Meaning," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 83.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Jacques Lacan, "From Interpretation to the Transference," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 246.

25. Lacan is basing his argument here on a parallel one by Claude Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), especially pp. 3-68, 478-497.

26. Jacques Lacan, "God and the Jouissance of the Woman. A Love Letter," in Lacan, Feminine Sexuality , p. 144.

27. Ibid., p. 145.

28. Ibid., pp. 144-145.

29. Lacan, "The Meaning," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 89.

30. Ibid., p. 75.

31. Cf. Gallop, Daughter's Seduction ; Mitchell and Rose, "Introduction."

32. Lacan, "The Subject," in Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts , p. 203.

33. Jacques Lacan, "Intervention on Transference," in In Dora's Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism , ed. Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 99.

34. See especially D. W. Winnicott, "Mind and Its Relation to the Psyche-Soma," in his Through Paediatrics to Psycho-analysis (New York: Basic Books, 1975).

35. For an example of his clinical work, see D. W. Winnicott, The Piggle: An Account of the Psychoanalytic Treatment of a Little Girl (New York: International Universities Press, 1977).

36. For Lacan's view of the psychoanalytic situation, see his "Intervention on Transference," in Bernheimer and Kahane, In Dora's Case . Schneiderman gives an account of his own analysis with Lacan in Jacques Lacan .

37. Sigmund Freud, "Mourning and Melancholia," in CP 4:154.

38. Sigmund Freud, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety , trans. Alix Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1959), p. 96.

39. For a discussion of some of the differences among object relations theorists, see Jay R. Greenberg and Stephen A. Mitchell, Object Relations in

Psychoanalytic Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), part 2. In addition to Winnicott's writings, I have also drawn upon Harry Guntrip, Personality Structure and Human Interaction (New York: International Universities Press, 1961), and his Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy and the Self (New York: Basic Books, 1971); Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation (New York: Dell, 1977), Envy and Gratitude (New York: Dell, 1975), Narrative of a Child Analysis (New York: Dell, 1975); and W. R. D. Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952).

40. Lacan's denial of the possible existence of a true self and of the possibility and power of early social relatedness helps account for his hostility to the object relations theorists. Lacan is transparently eager to replace the object relations analysts' emphasis on the concrete relations between mother and child with his focus on the "phallic function." See, for example, Lacan's opening comments in "Guiding Remarks," in Lacan, Feminine Sexuality, p. 87.

41. D. W. Winnicott, "Anxiety Associated with Insecurity," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, p. 99.

42. This phrase is Margaret Mahler's. See Margaret Mahler, Fred Pine, and Anni Bergman, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (New York: Basic Books, 1975). Mahler's work has a complex status. She wants to retain and rescue Freud's drive theory, but her observations and the developmental scheme she derives from them do not really confirm or accord with drive theory. Her work has been utilized most successfully by object relations-oriented clinicians and theorists (e.g., Masterson).

43. Winnicott, "Mind and Its Relation," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, pp. 246-247.

44. For a sensitive account of how adult eating disorders may occur, see Hilda Bruch, The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa (New York: Vintage, 1979).

45. Winnicott, "Mind and Its Relation," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, pp. 246-247.

46. Recent infant research indicates that even the neonate is a much more complex and competent being than scientists and many analysts (including Lacan) used to (or still do) believe. For excellent summaries of recent research on infant development, see Kenneth Kaye, The Mental and Social Life of Babies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); and Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant (New York: Basic Books, 1985).

47. The concepts of symbiosis and separation-individuation are Mahler's. Winnicott objects to the term symbiosis because it is too well rooted in biology to be acceptable to him. Cf. Winnicott, "Interrelating Apart from Instinctual Drive and in Terms of Cross Identifications," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 130.

48. D. W. Winnicott, "Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self," in

D. W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (New York: International Universities Press, 1965).

49. Winnicott, "Anxiety Associated," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, p. 99.

50. Mahler, Pine, and Bergman, Psychological Birth, p. 48.

51. D. W. Winnicott, "Primary Maternal Preoccupation," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics .

52. Ibid., p. 305.

53. D. W. Winnicott, "Aggression in Relation to Emotional Development," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, p. 216.

54. Winnicott, "Mind and Its Relation," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, p. 245.

55. Winnicott, "Primary Maternal," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, p. 304.

56. Winnicott, "Aggression in Relation," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, p. 215. See also his "The Use of an Object," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, pp. 93-94.

57. D. W. Winnicott, "Primitive Emotional Development," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, p. 153.

58. Cf. D. W. Winnicott, "The Capacity to Be Alone," in Winnicott, Maturational Processes .

59. D. W. Winnicott, "The Depressive Position in Normal Emotional Development," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, pp. 270-271.

60. Winnicott, "Creativity and Its Origins," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 71.

61. D. W. Winnicott, "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 11.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid., p. 12.

64. Ibid.

65. D. W. Winnicott, "The Use of an Object and Relating Through Identifications," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 89.

66. Winnicott, "Transitional Objects," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 13.

67. Winnicott, "The Use of an Object," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 94.

68. D. W. Winnicott, "The Location of Cultural Experience," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 97.

69. Ibid., p. 102.

70. Winnicott, "Transitional Objects," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 13.

71. This point has been made by feminist theorists such as Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978); Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); and Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (New York: Pantheon, 1974), and her Women: The Longest Revolution (London: Virago, 1984), part 3. Winnicott does have some interesting things to say about gender in "Creativity and Its Origins," in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, pp. 76-85; and The Family and Individual Development (New York: Tavistock, 1968), pp. 163-165.

72. On gender and core identity see Robert Stoller, "Facts and Fancies: An Examination of Freud's Concept of Bisexuality," in Women & Analysis, ed. Jean Strouse (New York: Dell, 1974); and John Money and Anke A. Ehrhardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), especially pp. 176-194.

73. Mahler, Pine, and Bergman, Psychological Birth, p. 102.

74. Examples of this blaming include Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, "The Family," in Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, Aspects of Sociology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972); and Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), especially chap. 8. On the tendency to blame the mother, see also Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto, "The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother," in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, ed. Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom (New York: Longman, 1982); and Bonnie Dill, "The Dialectics of Black Womanhood," Signs 4, no. 3 (Spring 1979): 543-555.

75. Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, and Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur, discuss some of the reasons for this in more detail. See also Jane Flax, "Contemporary American Families: Decline or Transformation?" in Families, Politics and Public Policy, ed. Irene Diamond (New York: Longman, 1983).

76. Sigmund Freud discusses this in "Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes," in CP 5. See also Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering, chap. 11.

77. Winnicott has an interesting discussion of the good enough mother's inevitable and necessary "hate" of her infant in his "Hate in the Countertransference," in Winnicott, Through Paediatrics, pp. 201-202.

78. Sigmund Freud, "The Question of a Weltanschauung," in Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), p. 176.