http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/42332432

In search of denial : a Lacanian analysis of "The Joy Luck Club"

"This study focuses on exploring the concept of denial. Denial is a defense system we use to buffer our relationship with others and with life. In this manner we often do not fully experience life and fully express our inner-most talents and desires. Jacques Lacan 's psychoanalytic theory of communication explicates several ways in which humans deny. According to Lacan denial happens even before we are born; and the behavior is strengthened, after birth, when we are still too young to remember. We are born into a culture which Lacan calls the Symbolic. The Symbolic, or culture, already consists of roles, attitudes, rules, expectations, etc. with which we unknowingly interact and by which we are influenced. Around the age of eighteen months, we again encounter denial as we enter the interaction Lacan calls the Imaginary. At this time we see ourselves in relationship to an other, perhaps our mother, a relationship of sensing our self as we relate to another, in other words an ego self. We begin to search for the ideal-ego, the I we think we should be in relationship to the other. Thinking this is who we are, we pay little attention or deny information coming from our essence or desire, what Lacan calls the Real. Instead of just an ego self, Lacan views the human as a non-static structure with continuous interaction between the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. This interaction is influenced by information we are unable to fully experience, and we repress in the unconscious, the Real. Part of fully expressing our essence requires uncovering and releasing the repressed material. The Real, also, contains information from what Jung calls the collective unconscious. I have applied Lacan's theory to the film "The Joy Luck Club" because this film depicts behaviors in which women deny their desire, and it shows the pain denial causes in their lives. The women had more joy in their lives as they accepted and expressed their own desire, when they stopped living as someone they thought another person thought they should be or as someone culture dictated them to be. Recognizing the human is a non-static structure of relationship among the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real provides a framework for understanding of self, a framework from which one is able to live a more fulfilling life. We are always in the process of becoming"--Document.

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