jacques lacan

Jacques Lacan was a french psychoanalyst. he gained an international reputation as an original interpreter of Freud's work. Lacan believed that ordinary consciousness can legitimately be aware only of its own incapacity. Lacan's desire refers always to unconscious desire because it is unconscious desire that forms the central concern of psychoanalysis. 

the mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. this was his first contribution to psychoanalysis which he described as "psychoanalytic experience". by the early 1950s, he came to regard the mirror stage as more than a moment in the life of the infant; instead, it formed part of the permanent structure of subjectivity. it refers to childhood, a toddler looking in the mirror helps them to shape their identity. 

Lacan's theory of Lack poses that people who are missing something in their lives become increasingly more obsessed with it until it becomes the only thing they value. the lack has a different effect on the mind, given that there are three different lacks; imaginary phallus/symbolic castration, the real breast/imaginary frustration, symbolic phallus/real privation.

the three orders is a concept by Lacan: 

- the imaginary: is created in the ego during the mirror stage. when an infant passes through a stage in which the external body is shown, this image produces a psychic response that leads to a mental representation of the infant.

- the symbolic: this is where the "father figure" comes in. the child is faced with the reality of the lack because it realises that it will never be the ideal desire of the mother. the idea of the 'lack' is essential to the symbolic order.

- the real: at the limit of symbolic order, the real is the unknown. for instance, if an accident occurs, we create an explanation of that accident, but that explanation itself is not the real anymore. the real can not be explained through language. 

Grizzly Man (2005) is a documentary film put together from Timothy Treadwell's own video footage where he he lives among a tribe of grizzly bears on an Alaskan reserve. Timothy Treadwell endeavours to become a bear expert, conducting field 'research' and also seeks to escape his prior social positioning by an attempt to journey into the 'secret world of bears.' he believed that having 'the heart of a wild animal' could compensate for his lack of education and training. the film is seen as more of a character study on Timothy Treadwell rather than a nature documentary that is first expected. his childlike and dangerous passion for the bears borders on insanity and the director Werner Herzog focuses on that aspect. he seems to carefully construct the film so that we see the authenticity of of Treadwell's passion and we see as he moves further and further away from sanity. Herzog uses the story of Treadwell and creates a story that points away from the idea of harmony in nature, towards the chaos of the universe. In one particular scene, Herzog narrates  over Treadwell and disagrees with his belief that nature is harminous and says "I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder." The Lacan theory of Lack fits well into this film as it is clear that Treadwell was looking for something more in his life. at one point in the film he says "Thank you animals for giving me a life, I had no life, now I have a life." before he began his journey living among grizzly bears, he felt like he lacked a purpose in life. the bears helped he gain a purpose which ultimately was to protect them.