Abstract
work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has had tremendous and unsettling effect on disciplines known in France as human sciences, that is, on both what we call humanities and what we call social sciences. Among most far-reaching of Lacan's subversions of our traditions of knowledge is havoc he wreaks upon temporal succession. This essay concentrates on problem of chronology as posed by Lacan's most famous work, The Mirror Stage. problem is explored in its relation to two important kinds of history: history of individual subject (that is, biography) and history of science. In deceptively simpler question here is where to begin. monumental collection of Lacan's work, Ecrits,2 begins with Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'. Alan Sheridan's translation, Ecrits: A Selection,3 which does not include Seminar, begins with an essay entitled The Mirror as Formative of Function of I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. jacket copy to Ecrits: A Selection tells us that The Mirror Stage is the in date of collection. Sheridan's selection thus appears to begin with text as part of chronological order. Yet closer examination of bibliographical information reveals slight chronological irregularity. jacket copy, having named The Mirror Stage as the earliest essay, amplifies this statement by information that 'The Mirror Stage' was delivered in its form to fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress in 1937 (italics mine). But text translated is not original form, but rather what Sheridan himself calls a much revised later version (p. xiii, italics mine). In fact, essay that opens Sheridan's translation actually dates from 1949 when it was delivered at sixteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress. Since this text is dated 1949, it cannot be considered earliest. essay following it in this collection Aggressivity in Psychoanalysisdates from 1948. But we cannot rectify chronology by simply reversing order of these two essays, since 1948 text makes reference to The Mirror Stage.
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