1Critical Terms for Literary Study,ed.Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press,1995),158.
2Ecrits:A Selection.Translated by Alan Sheridan (New York:W.W.Norton,1977),94/2.The infant's identification with the image is "jubilant",insofar as the image offers the promise of a totality,that is,a totality that makes the child correct or proper in its form.
3Lacan suggests such recognition when he refers to "the assumption of an alienating identity." From jubilation to alienation,the double movement of the mirror stage inaugurates the doubts about identity that haunt the human being throughout life.
4The ideal ego,a Lacanian term,exerts a conscious pressure towards sublimation and provides the coordinates which enable the subject to take up a sexual position as a man or woman.The ego ideal is the signifier operating as an ideal,an internalized plan of the law,the guide governing the subject's position in the symbolic order,and hence anticipates secondary (Oedipal) identification,or a product of that identification.
5objet petit α (the object of desire),a term translated into English as "object (little) α",but Lacan insisted that it should remain un-translated,thus acquiring,as it were,the status of an algebraic sign.It is always lower case and italicized to show that it denotes the little other,in opposition to capital "A"of the big Other.It is conceived as the object of desire that the subject seeks in the other.This is the imaginary part -object,an element,which is imagined as separable from the rest of the body.
6Jacques Lacan,"The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud,"Ecrits,Tavistock,1977.
