Irony of self perception
For Lacan, the elemental nature of self-perception is ironic, simply because the human child gazing into a mirror is astonished by its own physical appearance. To the mind, this fascination with the idea that the human body is a physical object is inherently counter-intuitive to the mind, which is why it's such an important moment in the development of the ego.
The irony of parental influence
For Lacan, the parental process is also ironic, because the parents are attempting to demonstrate human behaviors for the development of the human mind, but the child in question is still trying to fathom reality and its position in reality, so what those human tendencies amount to in the mind of the child to be are actually just gender roles. In other words, a child is born thinking that there are two images of humans, male and female, and it starts a narrative to explain the relationship between their selves as a gendered being and the gendered reality around them, leading to Freudian dilemmas, like the Oedipal complex.
The irony of symbols
The irony of symbology is that symbols are often conceived of as the internalization of external reality, but for Lacan, that's actually only half the process. One must also fill in blank spaces created by the mind for certain types of images. That is, our perception of the world is largely hereditary, ironically.
The irony of the ego
The ego is a construction for Lacan. He believes that the ego is essentially a cognitive link between the concept of the self, or the entity of the self, attached to the visual appearance of the person. The irony here is that the ego is not the self. It's the image of the person among a society. It's an attempt to behave rationally in a world with rules that aren't specific or clear, rooted in the fears surround social roles.
The irony of gender
Gender plays an interesting role in Lacan's understanding of early childhood psychology. There is a dilemma, found in the problem of dual parents. The genders are either demonstrated by the marriage of the parents to be harmonious or competitive, and not surprisingly, they often appear competitive. When the child determines its own gender by its fascination with genitals, it will perceive itself as a participant in sexual and behavioral roles, dependent on its relationship to parents. That's ironic because gender is a part of nature that operates with or without complicated social expectations.
Basically, the irony is that what we mean by 'gender' is actually closer to 'the way mommy and daddy differed,' which is basically social construction. Another central irony is the irony about essence or existence. Is gender the way it is because of nature, or because of scrutiny and the dilemmas of identity? Lacan would say its the second one in terms of ego, and perhaps he would liken the natural roles to id.
