Lacan, Language and Objects

So Freud ends up saying that we build the ego out of identifications with loved objects. We eat what we like, and we are what we eat. We make an identity by patching together the things that we've loved-- mostly because if we don't keep them inside they're always wandering off and having sex with our fathers, or whatever. Identification is a way of hugging someone so tight you never let go. Object-relations psychoanalysis follows the track of this intuition: your ego works if the objects you make it from are adequate, if you can hold them together so that they hold you together.

We've all done this consciously enough and recently enough to know how it happens: someone else's voice in your head and the feeling of admiration fade as the object sinks in until you can't tell where it ends and you begin. To say that this is how we build our personalities from the outset, though, is to say some very strange things about the relationship between self and other. That the relationship is porous-- does she want that, do I want her, or is it just that she wants me? Or that I want to be like someone who would like her? Who ever knows? Second, that it's porous because the "self" is born out of the "other," and this is just about the strangest thing one can imagine. What, after all, does it mean to "identify with" at this level? After all, you're not saying "I guess this is kind of like me" or "maybe I'd like to be like this"-- you're saying "that's me!" in a way that creates the me. (French and German are a lot more crunchy here because what gets translated as "ego" is actually "I" or "me": "Me is created out of identifications with others.") How can this possibly happen? And what does it have to do with love? We know that love and identification are close enough that they slip into one another, but why should it be that way?

These impasses are a wonderful entry-point into Lacan. The problem of identification seems to defy explanation, or even clear formulation-- and really, it's because he tried to sort it out that Lacan is so very difficult. Lacan accepts the object-relations idea that we build ourselves out of identification, but his fundamental contribution is to ask a rather obvious question: "What do you mean, 'object'?" What exactly is this thing with which we identify? Of course it's a person-- certainly not a "subject," but a very strange object indeed. In particular it's the kind of object which inscrutably desires, and really, when we love a person we're concerned with his (inscrutable) desire.

When we recognize this, the question of why identification and love are so close together gets a little bit clearer. What do I want? Well, I want her. What part of her? Her body, no, that's not it... Ah, her desire! I want her to want me, which is to say that I want to be what she wants, whatever she happens to want, which is to say that I want-- well, I want to have what she wants so that she'll want to have me. Or I want to be what she wants, maybe-- or maybe I want to be her, so that I'll have her desire? When we want a desiring subject we can begin to think why wanting and being are neighbors.

Everything else, of course, gets murky-- for one thing because we know very little indeed about desire, for another thing because it's hard to see from the description above why humans aren't absolutely porous-- how can any identity form at all if I want what she wants? Why aren't I absolutely determined by the flow of desires around me? (The answer to this question is "the phallus.") For another thing because it's clear that the object hasn't disappeared from the equation entirely-- I still want to be or to have what she wants or has. (The answer to this question is "objet a.") For yet another thing because, which other? Who is it and why? What does she want, and how do I think of her? (The answer to this question, obviously, is "the big Other.")

So this is all to say: I don't know any of Lacan's answers, but to get his answer you have to get his question first, and the question is that of identification. This is the place to start.