Musings on Ego Development and what Ego is

[MorningStarInScorpio]

I have a view of ego that is unique, from a psycho-analytic perspective. It specifically comes from Jacques Lacan and his notion of the Mirror Stage. I'll summarize what it is and then go in-depth on its implications.

A quote by

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to understand the concept of Lacan's Three Registers.

For Lacan, the reality of human beings is constituted by three intertangled levels: the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real. This triad can be nicely illustrated by the game of chess. The rules one has to follow in order to play it are its symbolic dimension: from the purely formal symbolic standpoint, 'knight' is defined only by the moves this figure can make. This level is clearly different from the imaginary one, namely the way in which different pieces are shaped and characterized by their names (king, queen, night), and it is easy to envision a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginary, in which this figure would be called 'messenger' or 'runner' or whatever. Finally, real is the entire complex set of contingent circumstances that affect the course of the game: the intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconcert one player or directly cut the game short.

I would also like to quote Lacan in regard to the Mirror Stage.

It suffices to understand the mirror stage in the context as an identification, in the full sense analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image—an image that is seemingly predestined to have an effect at this phase, as witnessed by the use in analytic theory of antiquity's term, ''imago''. The jubilant assumption of his specular image by the kind of being—still trapped in his motor impotence and nursling dependence—the little man is at the infants stage thus seems to me to manifest in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the ''I'' is precipitated in a primordial form, prior to being objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject.

This form would, moreover, have to be called the ''ideal-i'' —if we wanted to translate it into a familiar register—in the sense that it will also be the rootstock of secondary identifications, this latter term subsuming the libidinal normalization functions. But the important point is that this form situates the agency known as the ego, prior to its social determination, in a fictional direction that will forever remain irreducible for any single individual or, rather, that will only asymptotically approach the subject's becoming, no matter how successful the dialectical synthesis by which he must resolve, as I, his discordance with his own reality.

The process of the formation of the ego need not be in a literal mirror. This can occur in our interactions with other people through means of the following - speech, gestures, postures, moods, facial expressions, and so on. We're only ourselves in the reflection of the other. As we continue to mature, acquire language, a realization of the otherness and the effect of the other image of ourselves continues to assert itself.

In other words, when we've created out ''ideal-i'' or the ideal image of ourselves, we realize that it's not us but the other. Therefore, we realize that we lack something. We realize that we are not the only object of desire of the other. We wish to be desired by others, yet we realize they desire others and we realize we lack something and become envious in the process. Before one develops an ego, the sense of where one begins and ends is not yet established. They're a disparate machine of different bodily functions and sensations, with no central point for them to revolve around. A bunch of particulars without a universal. Wills operating on their own. Even our own body is not controlled by us, as we're not our body. Our brain is not our mind, as mind precedes the brain. But ego, seemingly, may not. Remember, mind is not the same thing as ego, since Hermetic thought explains how all is mind, which is not to say all is ego. The pain is not being everyone's sole object of desire, in the same way god - according to Corbin - desires to see itself, or how Hegel put it.

I would also like to draw your attention to a scene from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, which seems directly inspired by Lacan's writings.

I will say, no two beings can be the exact same, as Leibniz put it. This is in reference to the

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. If two beings occupied the same perspective in the same place, you'd have one being instead of two. Another way is that we all, ego or not, have a distinct qualia to us that makes on different from another to some degree. There has to be some-thing to make something distinct since otherwise it would be no-thing. If a soul has no distinct qualia or internal non-material qualities, then what makes it different from any other soul? Every Monad,

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, has its own distinct wave form that makes it different from all the rest. No two beings in existence can be the exact same, to reiterate, since otherwise it'd just be one being. If two apples occupied the exact same spatio-temporal position, for example, then it'd just be one apple. Apples are not sentient beings, so they can't have a perspective in the same way a computer can't. Perspective requires consciousness, as qualia are subjective and not specific to the objects of perception. Atoms, after all, are mostly empty space. The notions of hardness and softness, light and dark...are completely subjective qualities. Good and evil, as moral concepts, are also subjective. It depends on the frame work of the individual. They were not embedded in the fabric of the universe.

What makes me ''me''? What makes me unique? Why am I different? If I'm disparate, how is there an ''I'' to begin with? Why do I act one way some days, another way others, and so on? Some days, I feel awful. Other days good. Some I feel depressed. To answer that, I will draw a parallel to Plato's Theory of Forms to illustrate my view on this along with Nietzsche's notion of Will to Power. Beneath the veneer of the ''ideal-i'', we're fragmented beings. Far from unified. We're not the same as we were yesterday. Nor will we be the same tomorrow. Yet in spite of that, we're not different at our core. In the same way we have this notion of a horse, with several species, yet this quality of horse-ness persist none the less. Man is made of wills. In spite of these wills, making up the subconscious, vying for power...there is a universal aspect that makes those wills ''I'' and not someone else. This universal is within every particular but is not confined to one given particular. Our ego is largely an illusion, as we project an ideal image of ourselves to ourselves, while in reality our actions are influenced by our subconscious. If you consider Carl Jung's Active Imagination, subjects have reported conversations with the Daimons of their Subconscious, in which it becomes clear certain desires are not of their own making but something beyond themselves. It's impossible to integrate, i.e. absorb and thus erase as a ''separate'' entity - the unconscious since perspective of any kind necessitates an ego. Without that, you have no sense of self or form.