A theoretical research on the constitution of the subject in Lacanian Psychoanalysis is provided. The clinical aspect which motivates current research is the dealing with children bearing serious problems (psychosis, autism, mental disability, etc) and with their mothers, coupled to difficulties encountered at a specific moment in the treatment, or rather, when the structural separation between mother and child occurs. There are two ways through which the subject constitutes itself: the mirror phase and the topology of alienation and separation are both carefully presented and investigated. Although alienation is analyzed, the study focuses on the emergence of the subject within the unconscious, as distinct from the ego which is essentially imaginary. Emergence is given according to the Lacanian reading of Descartes’s Cogito, ergo sum. Impairments in the clinical treatment when separation occurs - especially the emergence of physical symptoms in the mother - are taken into account and analyzed in the light of the above-mentioned theories.
Alienation; separation; subject