as something inseparable from its mother; there's no distinction between self and other, between baby and mother (at least, from the baby's perspective). The baby has no sense of self or individual identity, and no sense even of its body as a coherent unified whole. There's no distinction between it and anyone or anything else; there are only needs and things that satisfy those needs. This is the state of "nature," which has to be broken up in order for culture to be formed."(Klages, 1). Lacan's philosophies go on to say that language is always about this loss or absence that happens when we enter into culture; you only need words when the object you want is gone. If your world were all fullness, with no absence, then you wouldn't need language. This is the state to which the narrator wants to return. She is deeply disturbed by the identity that has befallen her. I use the word befallen be!
             cause it is this disparity, of having needs and no way to express or fulfill them, that the narrator wants to escape from and return to the original state of 'nature'. We must understand the narrator's position in society in order to understand why she wants to return to the REAL.
             The second phase, the Imaginary, is where our sense of self is formed. It must be noted that the process of forming a self is a settlement for having left the REAL and a labor to regain that oneness, " The fiction of the stable, whole, unified self that we see in the mirror becomes a compensation for having lost the original oneness with the mother's body. In short, according to Lacan, we lose our unity with the mother's body, the state of "nature," in order to enter culture, but we protect ourselves from the knowledge of that loss by misperceiving ourselves as not lacking anything--as being complete unto ourselves."(Klages, 2). The narrator early on in life has views of society, while she is going through her scrapbook she not...