[Mirror image of the ego. On Jacques Lacan's theory of the imaginary]

Lacan places the concept of the imaginary alongside the categories of the real and the symbolic. This concept plays a highly prominent role in his thinking, given that the essential determination of the imaginary is the primary relation of the ego to the image of the similar. Thus it is not surprising that unlike Freud the early Lacan acceded to the status of theoretician of surrealism, his decentralization of the cogito having a profound effect on Dalí in particular. The author shows that non-identity and paranoic anamorphosis are only conceivable as the forms of the imaginary absolutised by Lacan if they are seen in relation to an Oedipally constructed cogito--just as mannerism regularly follows classicism and cannot be conceived of separately from it. If Freud was a classicist, Lacan was the mannerist who came after him--except that the latter refused to countenance this connection.