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and play without being certain that I can define the word ‘culture’. The accent indeed is on experience" (ibid, p. 110). Winnicott’s contributions, especially in areas of transitional phenomena, e.g., transitional object, transitional space and many other complex dimensions of transitionality, have influenced Latin American psychoanalysis, both directly and by providing bases for understanding the models of the psyche proposed by French authors, particularly René Roussillon and André Green, who have significantly permeated Latin American analytical work.
V. Ac. Influential French Authors
V. Aca. Jacques Lacan Lacan (1998) organizes the structure of the psyche into three registers: le réel, l'imaginaire et le symbolique [the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic]. These should not be confused with stages of development. Lacan considers the symbolic order to pre-exist the human being's birth. The subject is born into a family, a system of alliances and culture, including the prohibition of incest, essential to the organization of the oedipal structure, which retroactively organizes the pregenital structures. Accordingly, the inclusion of the father image in the human psyche is predetermined by the symbolic order into which the baby is born . The symbolic order is presented to the baby by the mother. While Freud considered that the image of the father to be present in the psyche through primary identification (Freud, 1923), for Lacan, it is the mother who transmits the father image to her baby. Lacan’s register of the real does not correspond to the common use of the concept of reality. For him, it is a part of the psychic structure constituted by what has been foreclosed ( verworfen ), and which can resurge, perceived as coming from experiential reality. It is a basic concept for the understanding of psychotic phenomena. For example, a psychotic might fear someone reading his thoughts because he does not experience his psyche as internal. The imaginary is close to what Freud described within narcissistic phenomena. However, Lacan´s conceptualization differs from Freud's in terms of the development of narcissism. Lacan describes a mirror stage , which is basic for the understanding of the imaginary: a child between six months and one and a half years of age, joyfully recognizes himself in the mirror as a whole being. According to Lacan, behind that image in the mirror, the child perceives his ideal Moi , which is constituted by the ideals that the mother – according to her culture – transmits to the child. The baby has to receive those images in order to please his mother, putting his own individuality at risk. The image of the father reaches the child through the mother’s gaze. In this sense, Lacan’s imaginary, is created from the world surrounding the
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