I some good introductory material on Lacan on the web today.

Mary Klages at the University of Colorado, Boulder has a Lacan lecture online.

Let me take a stab at summarizing what I know about Lacan’s theory after reading her lecture:
Lacan is concerned with the unconscious (wishes, desires, images). The stuff of the unconscious forms signifiers and more signifiers, but never a signified. Lacan, then, sees language as the slippery subject it is. For example, Klages states, “It’s kind of like a dictionary–one word only leads you to more words, but never to tings the words supposedly represent.” Further, Ellie Ragland said in class one day, for beginners understanding Lacan is like cotton candy — once you think you understand him, that thought disappears.
From infanty to adulthood there are three categories: the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic.
In the Real, we are in a psychic place where there is no separation from the mother–no lack. From the Real, we move into the Imaginary.

In the Imaginary, we begin to recognize the lack. We make demands. This is where the mirror stage begins and we begin to get a concept of other (not me) and Other (concept of others). We look at ourselves in the mirror and recognize an image of ourselves and our whole being, but this is only imaginary, fractured, misrecognition. This process creates the ego (I-self). Klages states, “…for Lacan, the ego or “I” self is only an illusion, a product of the unconscious itself…the ground of all being”. From here we move into the Symbolic order.
In the Symbolic order, we appreciate langugage. We keep trying to get to understanding or the beginning or the center of things, but we can’t. The center is the Other, or desire, or phallus. We desire the center, but we can’t ever be fulfilled because we can’t ever get to the center of things because there is no signified–only signifiers. But it’s the phallus that stabilizes things, patriarchally speaking, so that we can understand the “I.” I have some problem with this, but if I think of the phallus as a concept of father/mother, then I can approach it without having to adopt it.

The other information that I found was by Dino Felluga, who has put together Modules on Lacan.
1. Psychosexual Development
2. The Structure of the Psyche
3. Desire
4. Gaze.
I haven’t had time to read these yet, but I’ll summarize after I do.
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