Bailly, Lionel. Lacan: A Beginner\u2019s Guide. Oxford: One World, 2009.<\/p>\n
At first, the baby appears only to need mild, attention to its hygiene, and rest. Psychoanalysis has made much of the breast, because it is a perfect object for the newborn baby: it is food, drink, warmth, comfort, and love. The newborn, drunk on mild, hardly knows it\u2019s been born.\u00a0 Psychoanalysts point to that state of contentment as something that can never be found again, they point to the breast as a lost perfect object, although not in the same way that the Phallus is a lost perfect object. But that perfect state cannot persist, because the child is growing, and as it does so, its needs become more complex. After a while, it needs to use its developing muscles, and it needs stimulation.\u00a0 Those needs can be met quite easily: a safe room with space to crawl about, furniture to hold onto so that it may pull itself onto its feet, a television and a couple of of toys should suffice … but they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Studies … of institutionalised babies showed that even when adequately cared for, they failed to thrive: they became listless and depressed … Lacan \u2013 and perhaps everyone else \u2013 would say that from day one, the child also needs love, but this begs the question why<\/em>; love is, anyway, a lot of different things, that is so essential to the formation of the child\u2019s mental health?\u00a0 The answer may lie in Lacan\u2019s Mirror Stage, in which the mother\u2019s loving gaze is the child\u2019s first mirror and crucial to the formation of the infant\u2019s sense of identity.<\/p>\n … the failure of this first mirror can lead to a deep fault in the foundation of the baby\u2019s sense of identity, which is the ability to conceive of itself as an object, and a beloved object. Without the means of forming the proto-concept of \u2018self\u2019 at the right moment in infancy, there may be severe delays in cognitive development or even a complete failure to develop the concept of \u2018subject\u2019 and by extension \u2018object\u2019 and all the conceptualisations that follow, resulting in severe autism.\u00a0 All this would imply that \u2018love\u2019 is a primary need \u2013 perhaps the<\/em> primary need \u2013 with respect to the construction of the human Subject<\/span>. 113-114<\/p>\n But it is in the dimension of love that demand can never \u2018match\u2019 the need, and therefore the dimension in which desire flourishes.<\/p>\n One can only demand love obliquely, because in its very nature, it eludes language.<\/strong> It is not that the child does not try<\/em> to ask for it, indeed, once a child is able to speak, most of its demands are<\/em> expressions of its need for love.\u00a0 If you think about it, outside circumstances of extreme economic hardship (in the developing world or in war), it is rare for a child to have to demand something fundamental to its physical survival. Most of the time, what it asks for is \u2018extra\u2019: every day and at every opportunity, \u2018plain<\/em> past not filled\u2019 or \u2018chocolate cake\u2019 or \u2018not the yoghurt with bits in but that<\/em> one\u2019.\u00a0 It is in the inessential \u2018extra\u2019 that is coded the demand for love: in Lacan\u2019s words, \u2018the demand cancels the particularity of whatever is given by changing it into a proof of love\u2019<\/span>.<\/p>\n But why cannot love be demanded directly?\u00a0 Lacan would say that it is because love consists in \u2018giving what one doesn\u2019t have\u2019 (Ecrits<\/em>) \u2013 in other words, it can only be seen in the effort put in by the giver of love<\/span>. Thus, the child \u2018deduces\u2019 the mother\u2019s love by the effort and will she puts into satisfying the inessential part of the demand; her love is read in her proofs that her greatest desire<\/em> is to be with and satisfying to the child.\u00a0 In this relationship, therefore, the child sees the mother\u2019s love as depending upon the existence of a need (Lacan calls it a lack-in-being) and a desire in her<\/em> \u2013 a desire the child thinks it fulfills. 115<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bailly, Lionel. Lacan: A Beginner\u2019s Guide. Oxford: One World, 2009. At first, the baby appears only to need mild, attention to its hygiene, and rest. Psychoanalysis has made much of the breast, because it is a perfect object for the newborn baby: it is food, drink, warmth, comfort, and love. The newborn, drunk on mild, … Continue reading “failure of mirror stage autism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,24,119,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-lacan","category-language","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7563,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561\/revisions\/7563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}