Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Mirror stage

1,536 bytes added, 16:04, 25 April 2006
no edit summary
[[Jacques Lacan]] tells of the '''mirror stage''' in his essay "The Mirror stage as formative of the function of the ''I'' as revealed in psychoanalytic experience," which was published in English in ''Écrits: A Selection'', first by Alan Sheridan in 1977, and more recently by Bruce Fink in 2002. Lacan first delivered this essay as a talk at the 16th International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Zurich on July 17 1949. In [[Jacques Lacan]]'s [[psychoanalytic]] theory, the "mirror stage" (''le stade du miroir'') is the point in an [[infant]]'s life when he may recognize his "[[self (philosophy)|self]]" in a mirror, and thus achieves [[consciousness]] of himself.

When the child sees itself in the mirror, often propped up by another person or mechanical device and is able to associate the image with itself, it retroactively posits that before this autonomy that it now perceives, its body was in "bits and pieces." At the moment of perceiving bodily autonomy, Jane Gallop says there is jubilation, but it is short lived. As soon as the infant can posit that prior to this moment it was in "bits and pieces," it recognizes the danger of regressing to this earlier stage.

The potential relation between facets of the mirror stage and our relation to character archetypes has been explored in depth by theorists of entertainment media.

==See also==
* [[Consciousness]]
* [[Self-awareness]]
* [[the Imaginary]]

[[Category:Human development]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Philosophical terminology]]
[[Category:Lacan]]
Root Admin, Bots, Bureaucrats, flow-bot, oversight, Administrators, Widget editors
24,656
edits

Navigation menu