24,656
edits
Changes
no edit summary
The young child's identification with his own image (what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I" or "ideal ego"), a stage that occurs anywhere from 6-18 months of age. For Lacan, this act marks the primordial recognition of one's self as "I," although at a point before entrance into language and the symbolic order. This stage's misrecognition or méconnaissance (seeing an ideal-I where there is a fragmented, chaotic body) subsequently "characterizes the ego in all its structures" (Écrits 6). In particular, this creation of an ideal version of the self gives pre-verbal impetus to the creation of narcissistic phantasies in the fully developed subject. That fantasy image of oneself can be filled in by others who we may want to emulate in our adult lives (role models, et cetera), anyone that we set up as a mirror for ourselves. The mirror stage establishes what Lacan terms the "imaginary order" and, through the imaginary, continues to assert its influence on the subject even after the subject enters the symbolic order. See the Lacan Module on Psychosexual Development.
== def ==
[[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.
