Pluth, Ed. Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan’s Theory of the Subject. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007. Print.
In the mirror stage, I am presented with an image (or a signifier, a unary trait, in Lacan’s later revision of the mirror stage), and I get identified with it. Lacan’s article on the mirror stage does not offer a very satisfactory account of how this identification happens. It just seems to happen.
In Lacan’s later discussion of the mirror stage, we do get an account of why mirror-stage identification occurs. It occurs because the Other identifies me with the image. This is my motivation to identify with the image. It is as if my identity is already “out there,” affirmed by the Other as “me” before I have anything to do with it (72).
A subject is not consciousness
nor is it a “vital immanence.” We have already seen that Lacan rejects these ideas.
When the idea of the Other’s desire is added to this account of identity, the subject can finally be conceived as something that is neither consciousness nor an ineffable lived experience. In other words, the Other’s desire makes it possible to account for how a subject is something other than its identity or its ego. In the encounter with the Other’s desire I am given neither an image nor a signifier for what I am, and I am not encouraged by the other to identify with anything. The Other’s desire is in this way different from the Other’s affirmation of a place for me in identification. With respect to the Other’s desire, I am without a place. I am not even really addressed by the Other. … The Other’s desire is not at all directed toward me (73).