Swales, Stephanie S. Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject Routledge, 2012.
The infant’s mirror image is the first representation of the ideal ego (written in Lacanian algebra as i(a)). The ideal ego, an imaginary order projection, is an illusory and beautiful self-image.
This ideal self-image is precious to the child, and she will defend it as a prized possession, passionately contesting anything that implies that she is not as perfect as she believes. The analytic subject may therefore respond with aggression when an analytic intervention exposes the mirages of the ideal ego or the ego (Lacan, 1953/2006a).
The ideal ego changes over time, because the child’s conception of the perfect self is an evolving one. Therefore, the ideal ego is impossible to achieve, and “will only asymptotically approach the subject’s becoming” (Lacan,1949/2006a, p. 94).
“Man’s ideal unity… is never attained as such and escapes him at every moment” (Lacan, 1978/1991b, p. 166) although he is unfailing in his attempts to catch up to it.