[CHOMAT]

Originally Posted by bianca

Let me see here:

self-awareness is when one's awareness of oneself becomes one's object of criticism. Right?

Sounds to me more like:

To be examined critically, the object (awareness) must then be encountered outside of the subject, right? Or worse: if a subject is aware of an object, then the subject is also aware of being aware of that object.

Lakan concluded that the unconscious is another sign-system produced by language, that it is articulated like a language which in turn is produced by culture. According to this, the unconscious should be examined within the three- dimensional culture-language-Self "system". Makes me think of babies' unconscious: they haven't been exposed to culture so much, their language is not articulated (articulation comes with maturity in language), so their unconscious is incoherent, inarticulate. The more coherent the language, the more articulated the unconscious, and the more coherent the Cartesian Self (according to Descartes we have a more or less stable and coherent Self).

Now, as opposed to this theory, I remember inferring from somewhere that for a subject to develop a coherent self-awareness, her condition may be symptomatic of emotional distress. So, emotionally distressed people are closer to developing a critical sense of their self-awareness / consciousness... How coherent is then these people's Self? These two theories are mutually excluding.
I am lost...

The crux of the problem is the equation : the more coherent the lang.. the more articulated the unconscious is questionable ( The unconscious articulated in our language becomes part of conscious or of pre-conscious just as some darkness visible). As far as I have understood Lacan,The unconscious is articulated as a language but is not our language. The second theory which reminds me of Melanie Klein's proposition can be understood as: depressions act as steps in one's psychological route . They are opportunities for us to re-live former traumas (mother's parting...) and re-create our self out of those experiences. I guess we are not all equally armed in this process . It depends on how well we had been prepared to face those primal traumas.(the relation to the Mother).. But first of all, the ideal self concept is akin to the ideal language. It's a IT we are bound to search without reaching it. It's a game of subtle equilibrum, our self is like the acrobat on the brink of unbalance.
Moreover, We are drifting over other streams. Where are those gentle computers of ours ?
Alain