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For reasons that have never been clearly explained, it has never been published; the version included in ''[[Écrits]]'' was written thirteen years latter (1949).
In the late 1940s [[Lacan]] began to use the idea of the [[mirror-stage]] to elaborate a theory of subjectivity that views the [[ego]] a a largely [[imaginary]] construct based upon an [[alienation|alienating]] [[identification]] with the mirror-image of the [[subject]].
At the [[intersubjective]] level, the [[subject]] is dran at a very early age into a [[dialectic]] of [[identification]] with an [[aggression]] towards the [[Other]].
Originally based upon the findings of child psychology and primate ethology (from which [[Lacan]] adopts th thesis that a child, unlike a young chimpanzee, recognizes its own image in a mirror), the theory of subjectivity is subsequently recast in terms of a [[dialeticdialectic]] of [[desire]].
The influence of [[Kojève]]'s seminar on [[Hegel]]'s ''[[Phenomenology of Mind]]'' (1947) is crucial here; [[Lacan]] was an assiduous attender, and all his numerous allusions to [[Hegel]] should in fact be read as allusions to [[Kojève]].
