A psychoanalytic reading of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar presents a wealth of analyzable material. This novel immediately came to mind as an example of Lacan's theory of the “mirror phase”. Plath built this novel on a young woman's inability to form an identity separate from the false ones that are reflected back to her, her subsequent psychic breakdown, and her use of doubles or "mirror images" to recover/discover herself using, what appears to be, Lacanian. principles. The novel also penetrates the Freudian sphere of child/parent relationships and employs symbolism that evokes both psychological issues and commentary on psychoanalysis itself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Lacan's developmental stages lead to the development of the structural possibility of the "I". Esther Greenwood, the novel's protagonist, is involved in that very struggle. Lacan theorized that the child begins without realizing that he is separate from the mother and that to realize his individuality the child must separate from the mother. This traumatic act creates both a feeling of loss and the need to regain that sense of completeness that he had experienced before the psychic break. This is achieved by discovering what the "self" is now that the existence of the "other" has been established. The “mirror phase” involves the recognition of an incorrect representation of the “self,” the image of oneself that is mistakenly seen in the mirror as an “other.” This false self evolves into the "ideal ego" and becomes what the individual strives to recover. Plath captures the essence of the "mirror image" in the following passage....I recognized it, the way you recognize an anonymous person who has been standing at your door for years and then suddenly shows up and introduces himself as your real father, and the person you thought was your father your whole life is a farce. Of course, the person "hanging" at the door is the self Esther has yet to discover. The false self, the fiction, is the image of herself she thought was hers, the "ideal ego" that continually eludes her. The beginning of the novel finds Esther actively trying to identify what her "ideal ego" is. Its difficulty lies in the number of "mirrors" in which it sees itself reflected. He arrives in New York and his guest management with a set of (warped) mirrors already in place. There is the traditional academic image of herself, reflected by the professors at her college, and that of a best-selling novelist in the mirror held by her benefactress, Philomenia Guinea. All of these women, according to Esther, wanted to "adopt her in some way, and... make her look like them (180). In New York, Esther is confronted with the high professional standard mirrored by fashion. magazine editor, Jay Cee , and goes so far as to imagine herself as "Ee Gee, the famous editor" (32). Furthermore, there are contrasting selves reflected in the kind and sweet mirror of Betsy, a fellow guest editor from Kansas, and the cynical, light-hearted reflection. offered by Doreen Her conflict with these two contrasting roles manifests as indecision over where her loyalties lie---although Doreen possesses "a secret voice that speaks straight from [Esther's] bones" (6), Esther decides later. that it is Betsy who “resembled at heart” (19). These many mirrors only serve to further distance Esther from the recognition of her “self” in the act of casting her new clothes, which symbolize the different “selves” she has collected , from the roof of his hotel on the last night of his stay. Without a single mirror in her place, Esther begins to fully participate in her own breakdownpsychic. . Essentially, it is “without self.” Lacan felt that the inability to say "I" to be altruistic in this way does not allow one to become the speaking subject of a sentence, leads to instability and distancing from the center of the Symbolic, a phase that resembles the genital stage and full adulthood by Freud. So Esther returns to her mother's house, to suffocate under the "maternal breath of the suburbs" (60). By the end of the summer she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital following her attempted suicide. It is in the hospital that the re-emergence of the "mirror image" or double in the form of Joan Gilling occurs. She is Esther's mirror image in many ways: they went to the same college, dated the same boy, and Joan even attempted to kill herself after reading about Esther's attempted suicide. Seeking Joan as her new "double," Esther rejects the image of herself she had before. When the women in the department find a photo of Esther in the new issue of the fashion magazine she edited over the summer, she denies being the subject of the photograph --- "No, it's not me... it's someone else" ( 170). Incidentally, he describes the image scene twice in the novel, once when it actually takes place and once from inside the hospital. These descriptions serve as a distorted mirror image of the event, instead of as fascinating as it seemed at the time, it now seems empty and depressing. When Joan is admitted to the same hospital as Esther, the opportunity for her to act as Esther's ultimate double is realized. Joan progresses quickly through the hospital's "progressive" levels, succeeding in much the same way as Esther once in college. She sees Joan as "the radiant double of myself, specially designed to follow and torment me" (167). Esther eventually begins to detach herself from Joan's mirror image. She sees it as a negative image of herself, “an ironic and black image,” that must be rejected (179). To heal it is necessary to enter the symbolic context of Lacanian theory, where the structural possibility of the Ego is realized and the concept of the Other is recognized. For this to happen it is necessary to recognize that the other is not the "I". The impetus for this breakup is Esther's discovery that Joan is a lesbian. By making Joan a lesbian, the text suggests that she does not move beyond the mirror phase. Rather than seeking the other (sex) in romance, Joan remains in the realm of her own image: another woman. The negative consequence of not passing to this phase is symbolically represented by Giovanna's suicide. Joan's death also plays an important role for Esther. With his mirror image destroyed, his heart now beats: "I am, I am, I am" (199). She finally manages to discover herself; she is healed. The relationship between Esther and her mother exemplifies some themes of Freud's work. Esther's father dies early in her life, a loss that is accompanied by her mother's complete lack of mourning. He blames his mother for the lack of a father, since he is not even present as an object of mourning, and begins to hate her. This is seen as a positive step as Esther's psychiatrist smiles "at [her] as if she had really, really liked something" when Esther admits that she hates her mother in therapy (166). Freud would see this as a progression from one stage of development to another. In an attempt to align herself with her father and against her mother, she tries to get revenge on him in several ways. He lies to the subway driver, saying that his father is in prison and that he is looking for a way to get there. He goes to her grave with the intention of making up for years of neglect and "taking on a mourning that my mother never cared about" (135). His suicide attempt can be seen as a last attempt to reach his father. Without his., 1976.