In his essay, 'The theme of the three caskets', Sigmund Freud says King Lear could not recognize Cordelia as the Death - goddess, which brought about his tragedy. I, however, suppose King Lear saw the shadow of a dead woman on COrdelia's face both in the first scene and in the last one. This made him fear greatly and banish her. This illusion comes out of what J. Lacan calls 'le reel', I presume. In his essay, 'Introduction and reply to Jean Hyppolite's presentation of Freud's Verneinung', J. Lacan cites the wolfman's hallucination explained in Freud's essay, 'From the history of an infantile neurosis', as an evidence of this. But in Z. Ethique de la psychoanalyse, Seminar VII', he insists that 'Das Ding' which one meets in one's early infantile periods comes as an illusion out of le reel'. The Illusion King Lear saw on Cordelia's face was the latter one, I imagine.
