Word: Dehiscence

Dehiscence is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a “gaping, opening by divergence of parts, especially as a natural process.” Lacan argues in “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” that man’s “specific prematurity of birth” alters its ability to form a relationship between itself and reality (4). Dehiscence is the naivety that leads man into the mirror stage and it is this that he must work to understand so he may move from the Innenwelt to the Umwelt.

Lacan, James. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Ecrits. Tr. Alan Sheridan (New York City: W. W. Norton & Co, 1977) pp 4.

Oxford English Dictionary Online.