memory: otherwise Imago/ 2.

'Es' does not fulfil the unconscious.

“The mirror stage is a drama whose internal push rushes from insufficiency to anticipation… and finally to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark one’s entire mental development with a rigid structure. …Correlatively, the formation of ‘I’ is onirically symbolized as an entrenched camp or a stage, which distributes between the internal arena and its perimeter—a periphery of rubble and swamps—two opposing camps in struggle in which the subject engulfs himself or herself… whose form… seductively symbolizes ‘Es’. …If, indeed, Verneinung[1] represents the patent form, the effects will for the most part remain latent until they are illuminated by some reflected light on the level of fatality in which ‘ça’ appears.”[2]

Even the “assumption of the armour”—which already involves a judgement about the contribution of the Other—is a work[3] for the Subject, even as a newborn, and of which the Subjects make their own memory, without ontological automatism: this is why “onirically” can only be referred to the nights dreams when consciousness is sleeping, but not to the ‘daydreams’ that extends to hallucination and delirium, where consciousness is still presumably vigilant.

It is precisely from this work that one’s memory—indelible, albeit removable—can draw upon each time, with a ‘power’ of control over it whose convenience even a baby of a few months grasps, without leaving room for fatality: ‘Es’—however much it may be called “seductive”—does not exhaust the potentialities of the unconscious.

Marina Bilotta Membretti/ Cernusco sul Naviglio – June 10, 2026

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[1] Verneinung, translat: ‘denial’.

[2] Taken from “Lo stadio dello specchio come formatore della funzione dell’io”, p.91-93 in ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti – Vol.I’ edited by Giacomo B. Contri/ ‘Biblioteca Einaudi’ Giulio Einaudi editore Spa (2002).

[3] ‘Inherit from a child. Why not ?’, Marina Bilotta Membretti/ NeP edizioni Srls (2024) – Chapter 3/ ‘A four-stroke start ? p.82