Lacanian Psychoanalysis - The Aimée Case
On the evening of April 1, 1932, an assassination occurred at the Théâtre Saint-Georges in Paris. A woman stabbed the actress Gaité Dufloux. It was later discovered that there was no personal enmity between the female assailant and the victim, so she was sent to a mental hospital.
This assailant is the protagonist (anonymous) in the "Aimée case" discussed by Lacan, through which Lacan constructed a theoretical framework for paranoia.
What was the reason that led Aimée to attack the actress?
Masochistic Tendencies
Aimée's early life was full of ups and downs, with multiple incidents of rejection and victimization, which caused her to learn a masochistic tendency.
According to psychoanalysis, the subconscious mind allows the individual to reproduce such abusive experiences without realizing it.
Ideal Image
Aimée did not know the victim directly but learned about the actress Gaité Dufloux through her lover. Gaité Dufloux lived a luxurious and elegant life, and this beautiful image began to take root in Aimée's mind.
In psychology, this situation is called projective identification, where an individual projects their emotions, desires, or traits onto others.
Aimée's attack may have stemmed from her extreme obsession with the ideal image and her psychological masochism. She projected her ideal image onto the actress, to the point where this projection became pathological, leading her to develop paranoia. By attacking the actress, she achieved a form of self-validation on an imaginary level.
Ego Identification
The concept of the ego can indeed be seen as the result of a complex interaction between internal desires and external projections. In Lacan's theory, an individual's ego is not only driven by internal desires but also by how the external world is projected and perceived by the individual. The inner bodily desire subject and the external projective body together construct a complex imaginary structure.
Idol worship and fan phenomena are typical examples of this external psychological structure. People project their fantasies and desires onto celebrities, gaining emotional and psychological satisfaction, and using celebrities to build and confirm their self-identity.
When idols are attacked, fans' reactions can be seen as responses to threats to their own psychological structures. They feel not only a threat to the idol but also to their own identity and fantasy structures. This emotional and psychological mechanism leads fans to passionately and devotedly protect their idols.
As Freud said, the "ideal self" is a part beyond the superego, representing an individual's fantasy and pursuit of a perfect self. This part can be seen as an initial description of the external psychological structure. By projecting these idealized self-images onto an external object, individuals can psychologically confirm and strengthen their identity and value.
Object Relations
In the perspective of object relations, the subject is always in pursuit of a perfect binary relationship. The subject achieves this binary relationship through mirroring in the imaginary dimension and through language in the symbolic dimension.
At a deeper level, the subject is alienated; the subject is essentially the other.
The subject's ego-identity generally has a dimension of imagination, whereas Aimée developed paranoia in a more pathological manner, and even further, carried out extreme real-life attacks.
Conclusion
A individual's identity is not limited to biological boundaries but can extend to include various external elements.
The subject is no longer itself but an other.