Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Must We Leave Eden, Once and for All? A Lacanian Pleasure Trip Through the Garden

Recent literature concerning Gen. 2.4b-3.24 indicates that the traditional assumptions that the story is about ‘sin and fall’ are problematic, and the text might be better viewed in terms of a ‘maturation myth’. In this paper it is suggested that the maturation theme as discerned in the Eden narrative has certain affinities with modern psychoanalytical theory, and, in particular, with the work of the French postmodernist Jacques Lacan. Lacanian themes such as the development of language, the sense of self, socialization and alienation all have their parallels in the Eden narrative. The expulsion from Eden is just as necessary, though just as painful, as a child's maturation and socialization through Lacan's Oedipal stage.