Interpenetralium

Mind-world/world-mind meld: the interpenetration of the internal psychical and physiological systems of the individual and the external environment.

Imago Templi = Sophia = Penetralium
but here the Truth is in the weft of inner and outer

legendary psychasthenia

A concept developed by the social theorist Roger Caillios, legendary psychasthenia refers to the ability of some animals to alter their appearance in response to their physical environment. A chameleon, for example, changes color in order to blend into its surroundings. Caillois compares this biological phenomenon to psychological experiences of subjects who perceive themselves becoming absorbed into, or mixed up with, the physical space surrounding them (one of his examples is the fear of the dark). For Lacan, this idea offers a useful model of a transformation in an individual through an encounter with an external stimulus.

transitivism

Child psychologist Charlotte Buhler observed that very young children often do not distinguish sharply between their own experiences and those of others—if one child falls and is injured, for example, another child may cry.

Lacan presents such references to external, formative influences on the development of the ego to support his argument that ego does not emerge sui generis—out of itself—but is the product of a dialectical interaction between the psyche (Innenwelt) and the external world (Umwelt)—an interaction perpetuated in life in the interaction of the subject and the other.

It comes down to . . .

Kohler's gestalt moment, in which the elements of a task or problem—or a self—come together: the ah-ha experience (Aha-Erlebnis), e.g. in the mirror stage [cf. Nietzsche on Apollo/Orpheus and the principium individuationis],

versus

the fragmented body, where the infant experiences his or her body as uncoordinated, vulnerable, and insufficient; this propels the infant toward identification with the (apparently) unified and stable imago of the mirror reflection or of the caregiver (or of the Umwelt, perhaps), though he or she remains haunted by the contrary image of their fragmentation [cf. Nietzsche on Dionysus Zagreus/Pentheus, torn apart by the maenads = σπαραγμός, sparagmos].

Cf.
1. Niran Bahjat Abbas, Thinking Machines: Discourses of Artificial Intelligence (LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2006) 97-98.
2. John Keats: "Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge" (Letter to George and Thomas Keats [21 Dec 1817], in H. E. Rollins (ed.), Letters of John Keats, vol. 1 [1958] 193-94).

The Neverending Store-ree!

a.k.a. eν οίδα ότι ουδέν οίδα. "I know that I know nothing," says Socrates, according to Plato ("I know nothing," said Sergeant Schultz, meaning the same thing, being as he was a acknowledged Sophist). Thankfully, I too find myself in that position. But what is that nothing that I know?

By a Lacanian twist, the idea of the real, i.e. the Thing itself, springs to mind. But you can't know that. In other words, you can't know the Thing - it is not a thing at all: no-thing (these Continental punsters!). Or what about Heidegger's Nothing, with which we come into contact through the experience of anxiety? I know that feeling; that's what life is about, isn't it (putting aside joy for the moment)? When the world of Fantastica is devastated by the Nothing in the stab in the groin when you conceive a child, or less fatally, in the summons from the IRD or some other tug of your string by the faceless masters.















But seriously, this confession of ignorance is the premise of maieutics: the craft of intellectual midwifery, for want of a better word (from the Greek μαιευτικός [maieutikos]: pertaining to midwifery). The Socratic method is premised on the idea that the truth is latent in every reasonable human being but has to be "given birth" in response to questions or problems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maieutics). Or to put it better, on the idea that truth doesn't reside in the entrails - or bowels - of the teacher (only to be read once they're dead - or in their carefully guarded excretions).

Such a confession returns us to the mystery with which Heidegger believes philosophy begins (which he takes from Leibniz): "Why is there something rather than nothing?" (see his essay "What is Metaphysics?," which title is his own sly in-joke: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/heidegger5a.htm). Who knows? I know that I don't. I'm not the Taxman: "Let me tell you how it will be . . ."