CriticaLink | Lacan: The Mirror Stage | Terms

Verneinung is the German word for "denial" or "negation". For both Freud and Lacan, denial plays a central role in the stability of the ego, which must not only refuse satisfaction to many of the instinctual impulses of the id, but must also deny its very nature as an internally divided entity in order to perceive itself as an autonomous, integrated "I". This denial of the internal divisions of the ego results in the méconnaissance that Lacan views as consitutive of human consciousness.

• Baldwin, James Mark
• Bosch, Hieronymus
• Bühler, Charlotte
• Caillois, Roger
• Freud, Anna
• Hegel, G.W.F.
• Köhler, Wolfgang
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude
• Wallon, Henri

• Aha-Erlebnis
• anxiety
• captation
• Cogito
• defenses of the ego
• fragmented body
• Gestalt
• Ideal-I
• identification
• imago
• Innenwelt
• legendary psychasthenia
• libido
• méconnaissance
• mirror stage
• neurosis
• object
• obsession
• other
• Oedipus complex
• perception consciousness system
• phobia
• primary narcissism
• psychosis
• subject
• transitivism
• Umwelt
• Verneinung