Kohut and Lacan: Mirror Opposites

Barnet D. Malin
Heinz Kohut and Jacques Lacan shared roles as psychoanalytic theorists who built vital
epistemological challenges to the psychoanalytic mainstream into their metapsychological and
developmental theories. Their radical emendations were born fromtheir respective dissatisfaction
with the theory and practice of American ego psychology. Perhaps most fundamentally, each
found that, as practiced at the time, ego psychology foisted the analysts views of reality on the pa-
tient, producing results antithetical to the aimof psychoanalysis. Kohut (1984) wrote: We believe
that the [theories] of drive primacy and drive taming and [the movement] from narcissism to
object love areor have gradually becomepart of a supraordinated moral system in scientific
disguise; we therefore believe, verbal disclaimers to the contrary, that the actual practice of analy-
sis is burdened by an admixture of hidden moral and educational goals (p. 208). Lacan (1954b),
critiquing a case vignette given by Ernst Kris, held that Kriss analysis of the resistances con-
sists [of] attacking the subjects world (that is, his patterns) in order to reshape it on the model of
the analysts world, in the name of the analysis of defense (p. 332).
Kohut and Lacan thus came to listen and respond to their patients in new ways, even as each
maintained that their aim was to stay within and offer correctives to the psychoanalytic main-
stream. Their analytic listening produced several points of overlap. For example, each highlighted
the vital clinical importance of recognition (Muller, 1989, p. 363); each held that aggression
was a secondary or reactive phenomena (Lacan, 1948, Kohut, 1972); and each employed the meta-
phor of mirroring as a central metapsychological and developmental concept. They listened dif-
ferently, however, and their respective views of mirroring and a mirror stage stand in stark opposi-
tion, marking their point of theoretical divergence and leading towards their opposing views
regarding the fundamental nature of the self.
Assuming that most readers will be new to Lacan, I will first review structural linguistics and
the concept of the three registers to make an initial comparison between Kohuts and Lacans ver-
sions of mirroring properly. I will then examine Lacans concepts of the ego, the subject, the
Other, the unconscious, and unconscious desire to help the reader evaluate Lacans perspective on
mirroring and the nature of the self on his own terms. Finally, I will present clinical material to
demonstrate that, although opposite in perspective and mutually exclusive on theoretical grounds,
Kohuts and Lacans versions of mirroring may find a meeting place in the clinical domain (space
Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 31:5874, 2011
Copyright Melvin Bornstein, Joseph Lichtenberg, Donald Silver
ISSN: 0735-1690 print/1940-9133 online
DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2010.512848
Barnet D. Malin, M.D., is a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California and the New
Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, California. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the UCLA/David Geffen
School of Medicine.
limitations require that my review be very broadly based, and centered on Lacans early theories;
see Dor, 1997a, 1997b; Fink, 1999, 2004; Verhaeghe, 1999, 2004; and Van Haute, 2002, for
in-depth surveys of Lacans work).
STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
Along with Claude Lvi-Strauss, Lacans greatest influence beyond Freud was Ferdinand de
Saussure, the originator of structural linguistics. De Saussures seminal contribution was to recog-
nize that meaning in language is not formed by a link between a word and the thing it describes.
Rather, he found that meaning emerges through dynamic relationships between two very abstract
elements he termed the signifier and the signified. These two elements combine to form a linguis-
tic sign that, in its specific context, is the endpoint unit of meaning in language.
Asignifier is a sound-image not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psycho-
logical imprint of the sound, the impression it makes on our senses (de Saussure, 1915, p. 66, ital-
ics added). We might think of signifiers as the psychological inscriptions of all physiological ef-
fects evoked by hearing or thinking the sounds of words or the phonemes we assemble into words
in the flow of language. Lacan expanded the concept of the signifier to include inscriptions from
all sounds, along with nonaural sensory and perceptual experiences related to material objects. For
example, the sound of a distant locomotives whistle, the sight of a dime, or of a bright red stop
sign may all evoke signifiers (Lacanian writing accepts the shorthand of conflating such sounds
and objects with the psychological inscription that is the signifier proper).
The term signified refers to the potential array of meanings that may ultimately emerge in the
linguistic sign, which is the actual unit of meaning. This occurs when a flow of signifiers forms a
contextual network. For example, if I say, That bark is , you cant know what meaning the
signifier bark will evoke until the subsequent flowof signifiers secures it. Only then can you know
if I meant to signify (to mean) a dogs bark; or the bark on a tree; or a barque, which is a particular
kind of ancient boat; or other potential meanings. The contextual relationships between signifiers
as they flow in speech ultimately determine the signifieds in an essentially retrospective fashion;
the signifiers must flow before their meaning can be secured. As Lacan (1957) said, Only
signifier-to-signifier correlations provide the standard for any and every search for signification
(p. 418).
Three critical issues emerge fromthese points. First, signifiers have no inherent meaning in and
of themselves; without contextual flowthey are meaningless. Pairs of homonyms such as here and
hear, wear and where, and so forth, demonstrate this best: They produce the identical spoken
sound, and therefore the identical signifier, but only the flow and network of signifiers allows the
listener to determine which meaning they evoke in any specific context. It is in this sense that
Lacanian analysts say that the signifier is empty or emptied out of meaning. This also ensures that
meaning varies intersubjectively.
Second, we are born into a world already filled with the sounds of our language and our cul-
tures signifiers (Lacan, 1956). Specific signifiers are not inborn, and only the linguistic capacity
to create them is hard-wired. We can never choose our mother tongue and native culture; instead,
our signifiers are given to us by our mother (or primary caretaker). Therefore, Lacan (1957) wrote
that, Language, with its structure, exists prior to each subjects entry into it at a certain moment in
his mental development, and in his theory that moment is the mirror stage (p. 413).
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRROR OPPOSITES 59
Ultimately, Lacan recognized that signifiers have dominance over signifieds, which is the last
and most important point. Signifiers exert their dominance through their contextual organization,
without which no meaning may exist. Moreover, different subjects may take different meanings
from the same network, so meaning, therefore, differs intersubjectively. The Lacanian twist on
this is that all intersubjective relationships, including that of analyst and patient, are mutual and in-
volve each subjects submission to the signifier (Lacan, 1960, p. 682), whereas Kohuts em-
pathic stance privileges the patients meanings over those of the analyst. As we shall see, the struc-
ture of language and the role and fate of the signifier distinguish not only the Kohutian and
Lacanian view of mirroring, but their basic theoretical assumptions as well.
LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: LANGUAGE ENTAILS LOSS
De Saussure (1915) writes, regarding the structural essence of linguistics, that: in language there
are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between
which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms.
everything in language is negative [except for the linguistic sign which, as a unit of meaning, func-
tions as a positive term] (p. 120, italics in original).
Negatives, or empty spaces, articulate the boundaries between signifiers and thus distinguish
one from another. By articulating the end of one signifier and the beginning of the next, empty
spaces allow signifiers, and therefore language, to flow. In a similar way, an unending musical
tone requires silence in order to create the end of one note and the beginning the next so that a mel-
ody may flow. Empty spaces thus demarcate signifiers and language itself. This leads to the
counterintuitive notion that the structural core of language is a nothing, an empty space, or, in
Lacanian terms, a structured lack.
Sterns (1985) work on language acquisition in the developing verbal self helps bridge linguis-
tics with psychoanalysis by taking up what we lose and then lack when we gain language. He
notes that although language naturally opens a new domain of relatedness, with regard to inter-
personal communication it is
a double-edged sword. It also makes some parts of our experience less shareable with ourselves and
with others. It drives a wedge between two simultaneous forms of interpersonal experience: as it is
lived and as it is verbally represented. Language, then, causes a split in the experience of the self.
The advent of language is a very mixed blessing to the child. What begins to be lost (or made latent) is
enormous; what begins to be gained is also enormous. The infant gains entrance into a wider cultural
membership, but at the risk of losing the force and wholeness of original experience. [Stern, 1985, pp.
162163, 177]
Stern observes that with the onset of language, we lose something ineffable of our total experi-
ence, and that this loss structures a split in the experience of the self. Language may never recap-
ture the wholeness of original experience. We can only represent it, and in fact can never repre-
sent all of it. Language, therefore, entails loss.
Lacans metapsychology brings linguistics into psychoanalysis with regard to this gap. His
theory rests on the manner in which the lacks in the structure of language, along with the domi-
nance of the signifier over the signified, structure not only our unconscious, but us as subjects
and our unconscious desire, as well (Lacan, 1964). Our ever-present sense of ineffable loss and
lack, as intimated by Stern, turns out to be for something we never possessed in the first place,
60 BARNET D. MALIN
and yet yearn for all our lives: a self-conscious (verbally represented) experience of our total or
complete self in its wholeness of original experience, especially as found in relationship with
another person.
THE THREE REGISTERS
Examining how structured lack organizes Lacans theory requires discussing Lacans three regis-
ters: the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. The real is the register of all that is beyond words,
description, and consideration of any type. By definition, it cannot be rendered directly into words
but may only be represented by them. As such, the real is literally unthinkable; once we have any
knowledge of or perspective on something or some experience, we are in the realm of repre-
sentational meaning, which Lacan attributes to the imaginary.
The shorthand description of the symbolic is that it is the register of signifiers. It is also the
register structured by a fundamental lack (see below). Just as signifiers have no inherent mean-
ing, the symbolic carries no meaning in and of itself; it transcends meaning. Lacan (1960) de-
scribes the symbolic as the register of truth, since the empty signifier has primacy over all
meaning. Signifiers serve to mark the real (Muller, 1989) and may represent the real, although
the real is never fully representable. For example, the signifier 9/11 emerged after several days
to mark those unspeakable events. The real trauma was so great that this feeble signifiera cal-
endar date without a yearwas the best we could find to represent it. The real of the event re-
mains with us and demonstrates the events incomplete signification. Last, the symbolic is con-
fusingly named because it is unrelated to symbols and symbolism which, as carriers of
meanings, belong to the imaginary.
Lacans early theory, including the mirror stage, centers on the imaginary register. The imagi-
nary is the register of meaning, and all that is known, thought and fantasized, whether conscious or
unconscious; the imaginary is malleable within changing contexts of signifiers, and so all mean-
ing and knowledge is subject to countless interpretations, distortions, revisions, and evolutionary
processes, both subjectively and intersubjectively. Our consciously held sense of self and identity,
along with the entirety of our subjective experience, are therefore all imaginary: never absolute,
and forever ephemeral, changeable, illusory, and deceptive.
The termimaginary should not be taken as a deprecatory value judgment or stamp of unreality.
For example, all scientific knowledge and theory is of the imaginary in that it is subject to change
and contextual determination (Lacan, 1960, pp. 674675). Freud (1914) noted the imaginary na-
ture of psychoanalytic metapsychology by observing that it is only theory and therefore easily re-
placeable. Lacan (1956) put this point across by telling his students, Dont try to understand!, by
which he meant that knowing or understanding something threatens to fix the signification in
mind, making it difficult to hear and understand in newand unexpected ways (p. 394). Bion (1967)
made the same point regarding the difficulty presented by memory and desire in psychoanalytic
clinical work.
PREVIOUS WORK ON KOHUT AND LACAN
Many contributions report that Kohut and Lacan employ incompatible versions of mirroring and a
mirror stage (Margulies, 1993; Konigsberg, 1996; Kirshner, 1998; Hinshelwood, 1999; and oth-
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRROR OPPOSITES 61
ers). All contrast Lacans (1949) contention that the mirror phase, although normal, institutes the
ego as a fundamentally narcissistic defense against motor impotence and nursling dependence
(p. 76) with Kohuts contention that mirror processes promote unity and cohesion required in the
normal formation and development of the self. These are instances of the general psychoanalytic
critique of Kohuts theories of a normal developmental line of narcissism.
Muller (1989), Hamburg (1991), Kirshner (1998, 2004), and Reis (2004) have written specifi-
cally on Kohut and Lacan. Hamburg and Reis take up the contrast between Kohutian and Lacanian
versions of mirroring most directly. Hamburg expands his discussion of their respective views on
narcissism into the dialectic of empathy and interpretation, while Reis specifies numerous differ-
ences between them. Muller (1989) explicates basic Lacanian concepts and then demonstrates and
contrasts them with Kohuts by examining his analyses of Mr. Z (Kohut, 1979). Kirshner (2004)
considers Kohuts and Lacans work to reflect modern shifts in analytic interest towards existen-
tial malaise, alienation, and the sense of collapse or breakdown of a subjective intrication of self
with world (p. 69). His central claimis that affect, lacking proper theoretical examination in both
Lacans and Kohuts work, serves the critical therapeutic role when addressing these clinical
states, and he demonstrates how the seemingly incompatible tenets of Kohut and Lacan may be
applicable in earlier (Kohut) and later (Lacan) phases of treatment to help bring affects into the
clinical situation.
MIRRORING AND THE MIRROR STAGE
Kohut and Lacan use the mirror metaphor to describe certain aspects of primitive self develop-
ment, and their central metapsychological and philosophical differences appear in their respective
versions. Kohuts mirror concept delineates one of three selfobject functions in his theory which,
as discussed below, holds that mirroring allows the infants core nuclear self to develop. Lacans
(1949) mirror stage proper takes up the beginning development of the sense of self or personal
identity (in Lacanian theory, the ego) along with the imaginary register.
Kohuts (1959) most extraordinary contribution, beginning with his paper on Introspection,
empathy, and psychoanalysis and continuing throughout his career, was developing a coherent
theory of normal narcissistic development. The central metapsychological constructs of the the-
ory are the various selfobject functions that promote development of the self, including the primi-
tive, normal grandiose self (Kohut, 1971). The developmental setting for the mirror selfobject
functions posits the mothers responses, including her gaze, acting as a mirror in which the baby is
allowed to discover and become who he is and will be. Metapsychologically, the mothers re-
sponses mirror the exhibitionism of the grandiose self, and in so doing promote numerous aspects
of normal self development.
Although Kohut put some effort into creating theories of stages of normal narcissistic develop-
ment, he spent far more time delineating theories of the narcissistic transferences because the ana-
lyst may study transference directly. Included among them are several forms of mirror
transferences. Kohut (1971) writes that its most primitive form constitutes an archaic merger
through the extension of the grandiose self (p. 114, italics in original). He makes it clear that this
merger transference regression is necessary for treatment, so that after this expansion of its limits
has been established, [the patient, through the grandiose self] uses the relative security of this new
comprehensive structure for the performance of certain therapeutic tasks (p. 114). In healthy de-
62 BARNET D. MALIN
velopment the mothers responses to and actions for her child that serve mirror selfobject func-
tions operate in a similar way.
The point I wish to emphasize is that no metapsychological object qua object plays an active
role in Kohuts theory of selfobject functions, a proposition inherent in the termselfobject. Rather,
as Kohut describes above, responses serving mirror selfobject functions serve as part of the childs
or patients own nascent, grandiose self, and not as an auxiliary self of some sort. From a
metapsychological standpoint, the mirror selfobject function and transference theories explicitly
efface the mothers and analysts subjective otherness or object qualities such that they do not exist
for the baby or patient. The intrusion of otherness interrupts or breaks off selfobject functioning.
By contrast, Lacans (1946, 1949, 1953b) mirror concept focuses on the literal externality and
otherness of the childs reflected image with which she becomes totally identified, and how this
identification creates a defensive illusion of autonomy (Lacan, 1949, p. 80). The mirror stage
describes the developmental achievement of the infant and toddler acquiring his first felt sense of
identity, especially with regard to mastering his body. He believed that human infants were born
prematurely, and that their neonatal state of being is of the fragmented real of its body. Stern
(1985) suggests something quite similar, imagining that the newborns experience is of separate,
unrelated experiences that have yet to be integrated into one embracing perspective (p. 45);
Fonagy et al. (2002) do as well.
Between about six to eighteen months, the baby views her image in the mirror and comes to be-
hold a unified body image. Lacan (1949) describes howshe playfully experiences in a flutter of
jubilant activity (pp. 75, 76), the linking of her body movements through this mirror image and,
seemingly in endless ecstasy (Lacan, 1953b, p. 14), undergoes a total identification in a jubi-
lant assumption of [her] specular image (1949, p. 76). His only mention of another person with
the baby is if they appear as a type of prop, human or artificial, meant to help steady the baby at
the mirror (p. 76).
Lacans (1949) tone seems politically militant as he describes the psychological impact made
by the childs total identification with her mirror image, which he terms the ideal-I (p. 76). He
claims it situates the agency known as the ego not only in a fictional direction but that it also
leads to its paranoic alienation through its alienating I function (pp. 76, 79, italics in original).
The ultimate impact is that the normal human child develops a fundamental misrecognition of
itself as a subject as the childs intersubjective relationship with the Other comes into being (p.
80). It is in this sense that he says, Our view is that the essential function of the ego is very nearly
that systematic refusal to acknowledge reality (Lacan, 1953b, p. 12). This first identification thus
casts the die for the ego or conscious sense of self, which can never correspond with the funda-
mental subject of the unconscious.
In other terms, the ideal-I is imposed on the child from without, which is why Lacan calls it
paranoic. The child mistakes this imposed identification for her truest nature, thus Lacans view-
ing the ego as fictional, as a misrecognition of oneself as a subject, and as an organization that re-
jects reality. That the ego stakes its claimon the childs sense of self at the expense of the subject of
the unconscious prompts Lacans description of the ego as alienating, or as an alien identity forced
on the subject from without. Despite these provocative comments, Lacan (1953b) does not truly
begrudge the ego, in its essential resistance to the elusive process of Becoming, to the variations
of Desire for doing its normal defensive job (p. 15). Everyone needs and has a sense of self or
sense of personal identity, no matter how illusory. In like manner, the ego rejects reality because
this is the human condition, not a moral failing.
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRROR OPPOSITES 63
Despite extraordinary differences in perspective, there also seems to be some initial overlap in
setting the stage for Kohutian and Lacanian mirroring. Both find that mirroring comprises a core
element of normal development of the self and sense of self; both postulate that mirroring occurs
against the insistent background of fragmented bodily and psychological experience; both high-
light seeing and being seen as key elements of primitive development; both reject any distinction
between an imaginary inside and outside of the self during this phase; both occur in an inter-
subjective confirmatory and affirmatory environment of recognition; and both postulate patholog-
ical consequences when the caretaker or mother uses the child narcissistically in an ongoing way,
particularly by requiring the childs accommodation to their own wishes. I do not believe it mis-
represents Lacans intent to state that, along with Kohut, he considers optimal mirror stage inter-
actions to demonstrate necessary forms of empathic responsiveness by the mother to her child. At
the same time, it must be clear that when Lacan writes of intersubjectivity between people. he
means it in the realm of the ego and the imaginary.
THE OTHER, THE SUBJECT, AND THE
EXTENDED LACANIAN MIRROR STAGE
Lacan took up the register of the symbolic over the years following the initial mirror stage paper,
and he added the childs entry into the symbolic order as a subject in her own right to the picture. In
the early theory the infant, stirred constantly by the real demands of its body, countered its real
fragmentation by identifying with the image in the mirror, which conferred an illusory, defensive
sense of identity and wholeness. Lacan later recognized that entering the symbolic order helped
the child manage the real of its body by allowing its ongoing signification.
1
The child enters the
symbolic register by encountering the Other, a central Lacanian metapsychological concept.
Lacan (1960) said, Let us begin with the conception of the Other as the locus of the signifier (p.
813). The function of the Other is to present those signifiers to the child in order to help it represent
and name its experience. It is essential not to reify this concept into anthropomorphic form; rather,
imagine the Other as the locus of subjectivity of culture, signifiers, and other impressions of the
external world. The Other is living culture made available to us by our empty signifiers. It is thus
organized as a subject in its own right (see below), and it begets a new subject when a child re-
ceives its signifiers from the mother and the world.
The Other concept naturally has developmental ties to actual people, most importantly, but not
exclusively, the mother (Lacan 19531954b; 1960). Lacans distinction between the terms Other
and other is that the former represents the abstract metapsychological concept, while the latter re-
fers to people and/or fantasies of and about people. And to be clear, the Other is not comparable to
internal objects. Object relations theories put little weight on the external worlds influence. Inter-
nal objects are born from and live through fantasies of projective identification, meaning they are
of and from the subjects unconscious mind.
The first point regarding Lacanian subject of the unconscious is to clarify what it is not. It is un-
related to experience, meaning, thought, fantasy, or anything having to do with the register of the
64 BARNET D. MALIN
1
Lacans later theorizing included extensive work on how the real, and therefore the real body, may never become
fully signified. The traumatic real and the unknowable body are always present and never resolvable (Lacan,
19721973).
imaginary, whether conscious or not; these are all elements of the Lacanian ego, or sense of self. It
is also not related to intersubjectivity in the interpersonal realm, for that is imaginary as well.
Rather, the Lacanian subject of the unconscious is born of and from the Other, and as such is a
locus of signifiers as well. The subject forms as the Other presents the cultures signifiers to the
child. However, the subject is not simply identical to the Other as a locus of signifiers. Rather, it
forms as a unique, subjectively organized locus, and as such an individuals truest nature inheres
in it. Lacans (1964) way of putting it is that: It is at the level, not of the one [one subject], but of
the one one [one unique subject], at the level of the reckoning [the creation of the new subject],
that the subject has to situate himself as such. In this respect, the two ones [the Other and the form-
ing subject] are already distinguished (p. 141, italics in original).Verhaeghe (2004) suggests that
individual subject formation subsequently involves selection among the innumerable signifiers
presented during the mirror stage, rejecting some and accepting others, thus forging its unique net-
work of signifiers.
We may nowtake up an extended version of the mirror stage, although Lacan never identified it
as such. The interpersonal relationship between child and mother becomes represented by the
metapsychological relationship between subject and Other, and the (m)Others responses take on
the function of the mirror. Developmentally, the situation is as if the child and mother are together
in front of a mirror, sharing their mutual joy and recognition of the childs first senses of body mas-
tery and of personal identity while looking at his image. The mothers eyes, gaze, attention, and re-
sponses of pleasure or displeasure with the child also represent the mirror and its reflections. One
maternal script of this scenario might be, Look, there you are! Thats you! I see you! Youre won-
derful! Lacans mirror stage child might say (if only language were available!), Look mommy,
thats me! We can see me, and look howhappy you are! Your happiness lets me knowthat Imme,
and makes me feel like me! The crucial aspect of this imaginary script comes next, as the child
wonders, I feel like me when mommy is happy with me. What does mommy want so that shes al-
ways happy with me? Thats what I want to be or have. All of this is to say that the mirror stage
child senses he is the object of his mothers desire.
This scenario fits with the original mirror stage issues of ego formation, the illusory sense of
body mastery, and the beginning of imaginary identity through the childs total identification with
its mirror image, and adds the symbolic dimension to include the birth of the subject. With this
added dimension the ego bears strong resemblance to certain defensive personality structures in
psychoanalytic metapsychology (particularly regarding the egos alienation from the subject),
perhaps most directly to Winnicotts (19501955) false self and Brandchafts (2007) pathologi-
cally accommodated self. The ego thus created evolves during ones lifetime, and there is no core
ego of any sort given the structured lack in the symbolic. The relationship of the ego to the subject
correlates with that of the signified to the signifier: signifieds and our sense of self slide and
change under the signifier and the subject, which are (paradoxically) immortal during ones
lifetime.
In addition, adding the symbolic dimension fills out Lacans theorizing regarding what he
termed, following Freud, the ego-ideal. The ego makes a symbolic identification, that is, with cul-
turally determined signifiers, and while still imaginary in nature, the ego-ideal takes on a cultur-
ally determined form (in contrast, the ideal ego forms by a total narcissistic identification with the
specular mirror image). The ego-ideal enables man to locate precisely his imaginary and libidinal
relation to the world in general [and enables himto] structure, as a function of this place and of his
world, his being (Lacan 19531954b, p. 125; see also 19531954a).
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRROR OPPOSITES 65
BEYOND THE MIRROR STAGE AND
TOWARDS DESIRE: STRUCTURED LACK
Much of Lacans work lies beyond the mirror stage and cannot be discussed in this contribution
(especially the Lacanian version of the Oedipus complex, the object of desire [objet a], the real,
and the multilayered concept of jouissance). But the structured lack in language that Lacan took as
the centerpiece of his metapsychology, and that first appears in human development at the onset of
the mirror stage, informs his entire outlook on human nature and psychoanalysis.
The structured lack underpins Lacans two basic claims regarding the unconscious. One is that
the unconscious is structured like a language (1964, p. 20; 1960). On one hand, he noted that the
primary process mechanisms of displacement and condensation (Freud, 1900) correspond exactly
with the linguistic mechanisms of metonymy and metaphor. That is, the flow of signifiers in the
symbolic constitutes the primary process operation of the dynamic system unconscious. This ob-
servation links language and the symbolic with the unconscious through their structure; the un-
conscious is structured like a language. The other claimis that the unconscious is the Others dis-
course (1953a, p. 219; 1955, p. 10; 1957, p. 436), or specifically, the unconscious is the Others
discourse to the subject. Since the Others giving of the worlds signifiers forms the symbolic, and
thus the unconscious and language, Lacan draws the conclusion that the unconscious itself is a
form of intersubjective discourse. The key point is that our unconscious is not ours, but the
Others, who has given it to us through an offer we cannot refuse. To thus conceive of the uncon-
scious as if it were an invisible or negative foreign body within our mind to which we are subject
echoes the alienating and paranoic processes of the mirror stage.
Lacan invokes Freuds (1900) concept of primal repression to account for the process that cre-
ates the lack that underpins his metapsychology. In coming into being, this lack initiates creation
of the symbolic register, the subject, the Other, the dynamic unconscious, and language. It does so
through its negative quality, which articulates differences and thus allows signifiers and language
to flow, meaning to be created, and subjectivity to exist.
For Lacan (1958b), primal repression operates on a theorized first signifier to mark the real.
This signifier holds a primary function in the symbolic, because as the first signifier it is the first
element of the human representational mind. But the image of primal repression making a first, or
primary signifier disappear is misleading. Lacans intent is captured more accurately by imagin-
ing that there has been a failure to create this primary signifier in the first place. Yet our minds
function as if it exists and is merely hiding, waiting to be found, even though we never seemto find
it. And in fact we cannot find it, since it never existed or, equivalently, it is forever irretrievable in a
state of primal repression. In other terms, the real may never be completely rendered into the sym-
bolic, even though the symbolic operates continuously in pursuit of this impossible task. This
structured, inevitable, ongoing failure of the symbolic to represent the real is what is meant by the
structured lack at the core of Lacanian metapsychology (see also Verhaeghe, 1999).
What is the primary signifier, the signifier that articulates difference through its absence? It
helps to ask this question while returning to the developmental scenario. The central dilemma con-
fronted by the child in the mirror stage is, What does mommy want so that shes always happy
with me? The answer seems to be missing. That is, the child wants mommy to love her; the child
desires mommys desire, and the question reveals the lack of something that, should the child have
it or be it, would gain mommys desire. The child cannot tell from mommys words and responses
66 BARNET D. MALIN
2
This concept is directly related to Lacans later work on the objet a and jouissance (Lacan, 1964, 19721973).
exactly what it is that she wants. Lacan (1964) states that a lack is encountered by the subject in
the Other [and] there emerges in the experience of the child something that is radically
mappable, namely, He [the Other] is saying this to me, but what does he want? (p. 214, emphasis
in original). Lacan (1953a) states that, in the interpersonal realm, Mans desire finds its meaning
in the others desire, not so much because the other holds the keys to the desired object, as because
his first object(ive) is to be recognized by the other (p. 222).
Lacan imagines that the primary signifier, termed S
1
, is the signifier of the Others desire; our
true desire as a subject is the desire of the Other; we desire the Others desire and recognition
(Lacan, 1946, 1953a).
3
Yet the cruel fact is that our very structure as subjects ensures our failure in
our lifelong quest for S
1
. We will never signify or know our desire directly because the primary
signifier is lacking fromthe symbolic. But we are pushed on by the ever-present real to try again to
represent it, and we always fail again. Gurewich (personal communication, 2003) outlines the sit-
uation by saying that, as subjects, we enact without awareness a script that we have not written
[the flow of signifiers in the Symbolic] in order to be loved by those [the Other] who wrote the
very script [the Other gave us our signifiers] that has ensured our failure to be loved (because the
script tells us we desire to have or be what the other desires, which is structurally impossible). This
also underpins the reasoning behind Lacans (19721973) comment that there is no sexual rela-
tionship, in that what we look for in our sexual partner does not exist (p. 144). The primary
signifier thus also articulates the sexual difference, which is unknowable, never answerable, and
always mysterious (Verhaeghe, 1999).
That we lack the primary signifier reflects our structure as divided subjects, that is, the subject
of the unconscious is irrevocably, structurally divided by this lack. The lack in the subject, to-
gether with the idea that the primary signifier is lacking in the symbolic, means that the Other is
lacking and divided as well (although fantasies of an undivided Other without lack play a central
role in most clinical work). We must come to accept our fate as lacking subjects. This happens at
the close of the Oedipus complex, which finalizes the lack in our structure and our divided nature
as subjects (Lacan, 1953a). By remaining lacking, we remain able to be moved by our uncon-
scious desires never-ending dynamics. By accepting our lack, we refuse the lure of finding S
1
and
the concomitant seduction of finding imaginary unity with the Other that will fill all lack. Our
structured lack requires us to work at our relationships even though we cannot get what we believe
we want. In this way, we continue to desire, to quest, and to live, difficult and painful as it is.
The Lacanian version of desire reflects back on the nature of the subject, the Other, the ego, and
ultimately mirroring and the mirror phase. Lacan (1960) held that the Others creation of the sub-
ject constituted a subversion of the subject. Our desire is not our own, but the Others. Our uncon-
scious is not our own, but is the Others discourse. Even our speech and speaking is not our own:
Since we are filled with the Others signifiers, it is more that when we speak we are spoken by the
Other through their discourse. But this is different than the similar-sounding alienation of our ego
and sense of self. As described earlier, we constitute ourselves as individual subjects vis--vis the
Other, so subversion is a very relative issue. All oil painters use oil paint; they enter and accept the
given history and culture of oil painting in their birth as an oil painter. Does that spoil or subvert
their work or existence as an oil painter? It depends on what they do with their paint, which will
define them as subjects in their own right. And as described below, being spoken by the Others
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRROR OPPOSITES 67
3
Lacan (1958b) also calls S
1
the phallus, and of course this name has stirred up all sorts of misunderstanding. To be
clear, the phallus is not and does not represent a penis per se, nor does it signify that a penis is the Answer to the entire ques-
tion of desire; all of that is Imaginary and changeable.
discourse may feel unexpected, delightful, and have the ring of truth beyond that of our usual
(alienated) sense of self.
Eventhoughweremainunknowabletoourselvesassubjects, weareaffordedglimpsesof our true
natureif wecancatchthem. Slips of thetongueandparapraxes (Freud, 1901) servethis purposewell
by acting as the calling card left by the subject who, after speaking unbidden for the ego to hear, has
already slipped away and disappeared. We are often surprised, and at times embarrassed or de-
lighted, when such moments occur and we ask ourselves, Where did that come from?! A more
Lacanian version of the response would be the surprised ego exclaiming, Who said that?! while
looking around for, but never finding, the subject who stole the egos voice to speak. Moments such
as these when signifiers emerge without the egos interference, whether in slips or in the course of
free association, are prime examples of the power of the signifier over the signified.
It is crucial to hold the distinction between our ego wishes, both conscious and unconscious
and which we often call desires in common speech, and the never-knowable, forever-lost, desire of
the subject. What we believe we want is most often not what we actually desire. When we stumble
upon what may spark our desire, it may well take us by surprise, as suggested in the lyric of a song
by Laurie Lewis (1989): You cant choose the one you love, Love chooses you. The unconscious
tension between the egos Imaginary desires and the subjects true desire constitute a gap which
Lacan (1958) called the manque--tre, translated as the want-to-be, the something that is al-
ways missing for the ego, or, the lack of being (p. 534).
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRRORING AND THE NATURE OF THE SELF
I hope that this review will help illuminate some final comments regarding Kohuts and Lacans
versions of mirroring and the nature of the self. Kohut and Lacan presented radically new ideas
that led each to place mirroring in a central metapsychological role, but which subsequently led
themto drawvery different conclusions about its functions in the development of the self. Lacans
concept of mirroring, a mirror stage, narcissism, and issues such as omnipotence and grandiosity
adds another voice to the argument that narcissism functions as a primitive defensive system
against separation and dependency, and does so with a French accent.
For Kohut (1971, 1977), normal narcissism constitutes a separate line of development. If the
childs caretakers provide an adequate selfobject environment, normal narcissism supports those
crucial functionsthe maintenance, cohesion, and vitality of the selfthat underpin the lifelong
development of the childs nuclear self. In addition, mirroring and idealized selfobject functions
organize, sustain, and restore a cohesive, nuclear self throughout life.
Froma Lacanian point of view, however, these perspectives on narcissism, particularly the pro-
posals of a nuclear self and of union with an idealized selfobject (Kohut, 1971), constitute imagi-
nary defensive attempts to repudiate or deny the structured lack in the symbolic. The sense of a co-
hesive, stable self and the aim of a subjective sense of wholeness of the self are likewise, from the
Lacanian point of view, imaginary defenses against the bedrock of never-reversible incomplete-
ness. On the broadest level, Kohuts foundational construct of the empathic listening stance in
psychoanalysismeant to help the analyst understand from the patients point of view what the
patient means to say or howhe understands his own feelingsserves, fromthe Lacanian perspec-
tive, to harvest the register of the imaginary while leaving the divided, desiring subject of the un-
conscious psychoanalytically unrecognized and unobserved.
68 BARNET D. MALIN
One potential area of confusion involves how to correlate Kohuts concept of the self with its
counterparts of the Lacanian subject and ego. The Kohutian self is the central metapsychological
construct in self psychology. All other structures either defend against intolerable anxiety or
trauma, or compensate for defects in the structure of the self in ways that allow the individual to
function relatively well enough (Kohut, 1977). It might appear, therefore, that its Lacanian corol-
lary should be the subject of the unconscious. Kirshner (2004) comes close to stating this. He also
correlates defensive retreats to more primitive narcissistic structures with defensive retreats to
early mirror function identifications by seeing both as responses to fragmentation anxiety (p. 47).
However, Kohut (1984) described the structure of the self by stating it referred to its cohesion, its
strength, or its harmony and that it structured a persons experience of being whole and continu-
ous, of being fully alive and vigorous, or of being balanced and organized (p. 99). The structure
of the self could also evoke the experience of being a center of initiative, of being a recipient of
impressions, of having cohesion in space and continuity in time, and the like (p. 99). I hope it is
clear that by his own descriptions, Kohuts concept of the self, its structure, and its functions are
more coincident with Lacans ego. Kohuts self and Lacans subject and ego do not align in any
straightforward way, and this reflects their mirror opposite perspectives on the fundamental nature
of the human self that strives for healthy cohesion (Kohut) or the subject that remains forever lack-
ing but, as a consequence, forever desiring (Lacan).
LACANIAN CLINICAL THEORY
Examining Lacanian clinical theory in detail lies beyond the scope of this article. However, I will
mention several general points to orient the reader to the following clinical vignette.
From the Lacanian perspective, the transference is always structured by the patients relation-
ship to the analyst as the Other, most often initially as an Other without lack who knows all an-
swers to the patients questions about difference and desire (Lacan, 1964, pp. 230243). The
Lacanian analyst does not explain or interpret the transference, because doing so operates in the
imaginary register and is, therefore, not psychoanalytically mutative. The Lacanian analytic end-
point is not insight, integration, or any sort of imaginary completion of the self, or relationships, or
of the analysis itself. Pursuing such imaginary goals results in patients saying things such as, I
understand myself now, but Im still the same; nothings really changed. In like manner, offering
imaginary explanations of the material offered up by the patients ego will produce no fundamen-
tal structural improvement.
In Lacanian metapsychology, symptoms consist of overly fixed signification, and analytic
treatment unfixes meaning from signifiers in order to free them up to join the flow once more.
The purpose of verbal analytic interventions is not to inform but to evoke emotion through
freeing up the signifier (Lacan, 1953b, p. 247). Analytic listening, therefore, seeks evocative
moments, such as slips of the tongue, when a signifier momentarily escapes the omnipotent or
narcissistic fixedness of its imaginary disguise and allows the patient/subject a chance to find
instead that the signifier is meaningless, its nothing. A successful analysis allows the patient/
subject to accept his and the analyst/Others structurally inevitable lack and their mutual inabil-
ity to produce final answers, which are the conditions needed for the patient to pursue his own
desire as a subject. The patient recognizes that the analyst knows no more than he does about
anything having to do with him. The analyst ceases to be able to function as an analyst and be-
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRROR OPPOSITES 69
comes just another lacking subject trying to find her way through life as well. This person, for-
merly the analyst, becomes irrelevant as the source of desire, and the former patient may leave
to pursue his own desire.
CLINICAL VIGNETTE: A GOOD BOY
I would like to offer a clinical vignette to demonstrate some of these points, as well as to demon-
strate areas of overlap in self psychological and Lacanian clinical approaches. This example
seems particularly helpful in that it involves an analytic intervention compatible with both systems
that may also have quite different explanations for its impact.
Dr. A was a male physician of roughly my age who began treatment complaining of mild but
diffuse anxiety and interpersonal difficulties that threatened his work situation. He did not meet
psychiatric diagnostic criteria for hypomania or bipolar disorder. His childhood was marked by
physical abuse and emotional humiliation at the hands of his father that went unopposed by his
mother. One day, Dr. A, who was not a psychiatrist, marched into the consulting roomwith a sheaf
of photocopied pages and announced out of the blue that he had decided to begin taking antide-
pressant drugs. He walked over to me and, looming directly over my head, literally spoke down to
me. He said he had selected X, which was a standard, common antidepressant of the time, from
among the available drugs. He dropped the papers in my lap saying, Heres some information
about X, just in case you arent familiar with it. Dr. Asat back down and then spent more than ten
minutes giving me a lengthy, patronizing lecture about this medication and its properties. His ha-
rangue contained numerous factual errors.
Initially I felt outraged, insulted, bullied, and subject to a contemptuous attack. He hadnt
seemed to realize that I felt threatened by his physical posture as he stood over me with his papers,
and he never seemed able during the rest of the hour to recognize that perhaps standing over me
and then deigning to teach me about a medication I knew far better than he might not be the best
way of discussing his intentions. Many vindictive epithets meant to humiliate and attack him
crossed my mind. I hope describing the scene in this way captures a bit of my emotional states of
mind at that moment.
I knew from past experience that making explanatory transference interpretations linking his
emotions and fantasies toward his father with me had no noticeable impact on him at all. At-
tempting to draw his attention to any element of his enactment of standing up over me would have
been similarly pointless. In fact, he routinely shrugged off or denied any intervention regarding
any of his feeling states because, as best I could understand it, my doing so turned me into a type of
superior authority object that took sadistic satisfaction in abusing and humiliating him. As I
thought about all this, I imagined that his humiliated envy and hate functioned as a primitive way
of turning the transference tables on perceived authorities like his father and me. As another physi-
cian of roughly his age, I fit the profile of both a peer and an authority who was supposedly normal
and not needful myself of the help I was supposed to be able to give him.
The question, of course, was howto respond. But this particular situation was marked by some-
thing else, namely, the sheaf of papers that now lay on my lap. Near the end of his oppressive
monologue, and needing to collect myself, I somehow became aware of feeling my hands on the
papers. I glanced down again at the copies of more than ten articles about the drug from medical
journals, all covered with his markings of circled phrases, highlighted words, and notes in the mar-
70 BARNET D. MALIN
gins. As I did so, I heard Dr. A say, So X works very well; the research shows it works. He had
not addressed me directly when saying this.
The word works leapt out at me as I looked at the papers. I said something to the effect of,
Work. You mean the drug works well, but clearly you do, too. Putting these papers together took
a lot of time and work on your part. Dr. A actually stopped and listened to me, a very rare occur-
rence. Your hard work. Thats one thing I see in all these papers.
My patient began crying for the first time in the treatment. During the rest of the session, he
spoke more slowly than usual and with far more emotion in his voice than Id ever heard. He re-
called how his father demanded academic perfection and beat him mercilessly for any perceived
laziness or inadequacy, even when he worked hard at his school projects. The only additional in-
tervention I made was to say a bit later on, I guess you want me to see howhard you work on your
own behalf, that youre being serious and careful and complete about it. The only mention he
made of either intervention or of me in any way was to say at the end that he hadnt been thinking
about those things in this way. In the months that followed, we were occasionally able to take up
elements of his envious and hostile relationships with other doctors in his field, which served as
confirmatory evidence for me that this particular session had been helpful for Dr. A.
We may say without too much objection that, from a self psychological point of view, Dr. A
suffered with a deeply rooted self disorder or narcissistic personality disturbance (at least in rela-
tionship with me, but by his reports he did with all others as well). From a Lacanian point of view,
Dr. A demonstrated an obsessive structural transference in which he separated himself as subject
from me as the Other. His transference position was to expel, deny, or destroy me as the Other,
which encompassed his global denial or disavowal of just about anything I said. If he did not do so,
then my transference desire toward him, that is, the desire of the Other, would threaten to erase
him as a subject by reducing him to becoming an object of my desire. This is a feature of the
Lacanian obsessive transference structure.
A self psychological reading of this vignette seems relatively straightforward. Dr. A was in an
archaic merger transference and had been so from the moment he began his treatment (less primi-
tively organized people typically enter treatment well-defended against re-experiencing such un-
varnished mirroring selfobject needs). Idealizing selfobject needs and manifestations were only in
the deep background of the transference, but were present in idolizing a teacher from his resi-
dency. I seemed not to exist for him as a subjective being in my own right, and his response to me
depended solely on whether or not I performed mirroring or idealizing selfobject functions for
him. If I succeeded he didnt acknowledge me at all, and if I failed he criticized me. I most often
experienced the classic countertransference response of feeling reduced to a nonhuman object or
even of being effaced to nonexistence.
Dr. As positive response to my intervention seemed to result from my efforts to contain (with-
out denying) my initial reactions in order to reconsider him from the empathic stance. In this in-
stance, doing so made a dramatic difference. Importantly, he acknowledged not having these new
ideas about the meaning of his papers in mind when doing his research or giving me his presenta-
tion. But when I proposed them, he felt immediately that they were true, and that I had understood
something essential about him. Yet howI actually came to those understandings was very unclear.
I exerted no conscious cognitive effort on my part, yet somehowthey appeared at the moment, and
I offered them to him in my two interpretations.
The Lacanian reading of this hour centers on my capacity to experience Dr. As papers and the
words work and works as signifiers newly emptied of their previously fixed meanings in the trans-
KOHUT AND LACAN: MIRROR OPPOSITES 71
ference. Initially, Dr. A signified his papers as the effort necessary to prove he selected the correct
drug, while I signified his papers as demonstrating envious contempt, an attack on my authority
and his hatred of dependence. If my meaning had remained fixed, it would have constituted a
problem. This is why Lacan (1954a) wrote that there is no other resistance in analysis than that of
the analyst (p. 314). That is, the patient can do nothing else but present signifiers, which in es-
sence consists of putting the unconscious out to hide out in plain sight (Lacan, 1955). It is the ana-
lysts job to experience them as empty vessels freed of the patients symptomatic significations. I
allowed two such signifiers to find me by not trying to understand them in advance. I became
aware of the papers first by the sensory impressions on my hand, and then by all the markings on
them; at the same time the word work seemed to leap out at me, by which I mean it stood out from
other words by evoking a sudden complex emotional and cognitive heightening for me. These pro-
cesses allowed newbranches of meaning for his papers and the word work to grow. I did not know
the text of my interpretations before I spoke them, and had only a general notion of howthese new
significations would shape whatever I said.
Lacan (1964) is quite clear, however, that this is no random process, or that not just any
signifier plucked from the blue of the patients flow may be used for effective interpretation (pp.
249251). Rather, it must be one in the chain of metaphoricand metonymic substitutions that al-
lows the greatest emptying out of meaning so that the patient/subject has the greatest experience
of receiving it anew. Successful poems are networks not of random words, but of specific signifi-
ers that, when read or heard, resonate with multiple meanings and evoke emotions on many levels,
so much so that we cant articulate all of thembut simply knowwe have felt the inner ring of emo-
tional truth. That said, any signifier may be used in a poem, and it is the poets skill that empties
themout so that they may evoke meaning. In this instance, I was able to create a poemout of paper
and the word work that resonated for Dr. Awith previously unknown emotional truth. He couldnt
explain everything about his tears, and there was no need to. He began creating new significations
as these newly freed signifiers gave himaccess to many more that allowed further evocation of his
emotional state, and this made the hour meaningful to him.
I find that this vignette demonstrates how two mutually exclusive models of the mind may ex-
plain the same clinical phenomena. Is there a significant difference between claiming that the in-
tervention was derived from the empathic listening stance as opposed to claiming that it was de-
rived by enabling a signifier to become unfixed from its symptomatic signification? From within
each metapsychology the answer, I believe, is yes. But from a perspective in which one need not
defend Kohut or Lacan, I believe the answer is no; each system describes the same clinical phe-
nomenon by using different concepts and metrics.
In fact, I find that this comparison sheds some light on self psychological concepts of mirror-
ing. The Lacanian perspective focuses on the signifiers capacity to evoke meaning as they form.
From this, I take that self psychological mirroring need not consist solely of the analysts
empathically derived cognitive understanding of what the patient means to say, or of what the pa-
tient feels. Perhaps the analysts openness to the empty signifier may allow her to help the patient
find the poem in his otherwise fixed meanings and thus discover them for himself. The analysts
empathic stance, therefore, may also include alertness for which of the patients signifiers may be
most clearly hiding in plain sight. These signifiers require interventions to mark and reveal their
essential emptiness to the patient. This is a view of empathy as the analytic listening stance that
guides the analyst in presenting the patient a chance to recognize personal emotional truth, regard-
less of its content, or whether he likes it or not, believes it to be his true feeling or not, or whether it
72 BARNET D. MALIN
was conscious or unconscious at the moment. It is the analytic vantage point that offers the patient
access to and expression of his most basic emotional states. I find that, often, those he fears and
disavows the most are the ones that become most mutative when emerging within the transfer-
ence. In this way, I find that criticismof Lacan by Kirshner (2004) and others for neglecting affect
in his theorizing may be true, but not necessarily clinically significant.
Kohut and Lacan appear as mirror opposites with regard to their metapsychologies and per-
spectives on the nature of the self/subject, and their versions of the mirror stage highlight these of-
ten dramatic differences. At the same time, each mans psychoanalytic approach seeks to offer a
patient access to immediate experiences of emotion, fantasy, and self/subject recognition that he
otherwise denies, disavows, and fears. If he is brave enough to face himself, Kohut and Lacan be-
lieve that the patient may enhance his capacity to live a life motivated by his desire as a self/subject
in his own right.
Yet each says and does this in his own way:
Agood analysis, we believe, leads to a cure only by its employment, in countless repetitions, of the ba-
sic therapeutic unit of understanding and explaining. [Kohut, 1984, p. 209]
It sometimes seems that two [ears] are already too many, since [the analyst] runs headlong into the
fundamental misunderstanding brought on by the relationship of understanding. I repeatedly tell my
students: Dont try to understand! and leave this nauseating category to Karl Jaspers and his con-
sorts. May one of your ears become as deaf as the other one must be acute. [Lacan, 1956, p. 394]
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