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→... and Mimicry
[[Roger Caillois]], a French thinker fascinated with the theme of masks, games and the relation of the [[human]] to the [[animal kingdom]], argued that there was a sort of [[natural]] [[law]] whereby ''organisms become [[captured]] in their environment''. They will thus take on the coloring, for example, of the [[space]] around them.
=====Captured in an Image=====
[[Lacan]] developed this thesis in his work on the [[mirror phase]], combining it with observations from [[child]] [[psychology]] and [[social theory]] and argued for a similar form of [[imaginary]] [[capture]] for the organism in an [[external]] [[image]]. (The [[child]] [[identifies]] with an [[image]] [[outside]] himself, be it an actual [[mirror image]] or simlply the [[image]] of [[another]] [[child]]. The [[apparent]] [[completeness]] of this [[image]] gives the [[child]] a new [[mastery]] over the [[body]].)
In the 1938 encyclopedia article, this idea is used to give a brilliant explanation of the inexplicable swings in a [[child]]'s [[behavior]] from the tyrannical or [[seductive]] attitude to its opposite. Rather than linking this to a conflict between two individuals, the [[child]] and the [[spectator]] in this instance, [[Lacan]] argues that it derives from a conflict [[internal]] to each of them, resulting from ''an [[identification]] with the other party''. This is an organizing principle of [[development]] rather than a single moment in [[childhood]]. (If I have [[identified]] with an [[image]] [[outside]] myself, I can do things I couldn't do before.)
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