Toward Reading Lacan: Pages for a Workbook: Chapter 1: The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience

Lacan first presented his views on the nature of the ego to the Fourteenth International Psycho-Analytical Congress at Marienbad, July 31, 1936, but failed to submit a written text to be included in the proceedings of the Congress (1966, p. 67, fn. 1). Hence the present text, dating from thirteen years later, is the first full articulation of this important theme that we have. But even in 1936, Lacan's formulation did not fall completely out of the blue. To gain a better sense of the import of this essay, then, it may be useful to review briefly the course of the author's intellectual career up to that time.

We have seen already that Lacan's clinical training had culminated in a doctoral thesis (1932), On Paranoia and Its Relationship to Personality, in which he examined in a detailed case study the interaction between personality and