imaginary (imaginaire) A concept used by Bachelard, Gaston, Lacan, Jacques, and Sartre, Jean-Paul to indicate (in their own differing ways) a process of the mind or the psychical apparatus susceptible to the seductions of the image. For Lacan, the imaginary is the state or order of mind of the child before it is inducted into the symbolic order via the process he referred to as the mirror stage. The child sees itself in the mirror and ecofeminism the image it sees reflected there as its true self. The âIâ in this sense is an image, which is to say a product of the imaginary. The imaginary is not a âchildishâ state of mind, it is rather a state of mind ignorant of the limits of the real and therefore highly creative. But it can also be disturbing---the experience of psychosis is akin to being trapped in the imaginary.