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Mirror stage

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The [[mirror stage]] is described in Lacan's essay, "The Mirror Stage as formative in the function of the ''I'' as revealed in psychoanalytic experience", the first of his ''Écrits'', which remains one of his seminal papers. Some have crudely put this as the point at which the child 'recognises' him- or herself in the mirror image, but this is unfaithful to what Lacan has in mind and also confuses his terminology. Lacan's emphasis here is on the process of ''identification'' with an outside image or entity induced through, as he puts it, "insufficiency to anticipation – and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic – and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental development" (Lacan, ''Écrits'' (rvd. edn., 2002), 'The mirror stage', p. 5).{{Top}}stade du miroir{{Bottom}}
It is significant that this process ==Jacques Lacan=====History===The [[concept]] of identification is the first step towards the manufacture of the subject because all that follows it - the transition into the Imaginary and the Symbolic order - [[mirror stage]] is based on this misrecognition (''méconnaissance''): this is the process that [[Lacan detects as manifesting itself at every subsequent identification with another person, identity (''not']]' s first important contribution to be confused with 'identification') or suchlike throughout the subject[[psychoanalysis|psychoanalytic theory]], [[Lacan]]'s life. This is first innovation within the start field of a lifelong process of identifying the self [[psychoanalysis]], propounded at an [[IPA]] conference at [[Marienbad]] in terms of the Other[[{{Y}}|1936]]. What The concept is also occasionally overlooked is the experiential basis a constant point of reference throughout [[Lacan]]'s early paper. As one writer has observed[[Jacques Lacan: "To evidence concerning the role of the other in childhood – the situation known as "transitivismBibliography|work]]," for instance, where the child will impute his own actions to another – Lacan adds evidence from animal biology, where it has been experimentally shown that a perceptual relationship to another of the same species is necessary in the normal maturing process. Without the visual presence of others, the maturing process is delayed, although it can be restored to a more nearly normal tempo by placing a mirror in the animal’s cage." (and becomes increasingly [[Anthony Wildencomplex]], "Lacan and the discourse of the Other" in Lacan, ''The Language of the Self: the Function of Language as it is reworked in Psychoanalysis'', trans. Anthony Wilden (London and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 159 – 160various different contexts.)
===Child Psychology===
The "[[mirror stage|mirror test]]" was first described by the [[French]] [[psychology|psychologist]] and friend of [[Lacan]], Henri Wallon, in 1931, although [[Lacan]] attributes its discovery to Baldwin.<ref>{{E}} p. 1</ref> It refers to a [[particular]] experiment which can differentiate the [[human]] [[infant]] from his closest [[animal]] relative, the chimpanzee. The six-­month-old child differs from the chimpanzee of the same age in that the former becomes fascinated with its [[reflection]] in the [[mirror]] and jubilantly assumes it as its own [[image]], whereas the chimpanzee quickly realizes that the [[image]] is [[illusory]] and loses interest in it.
== def =Structure of Subjectivity===[[Lacan]]'s concept of the [[mirror stage]] represents a fundamental aspect of the [[structure]] of [[subjectivity]]. Whereas in [[{{Y}}|1936-49]], [[Lacan]] seems to see it is a [[development|stage]] which can be located at a specific [[time]] in the [[development]] of the [[child]] with a beginning (six months) and an end (eighteen months),<ref>{{E}} p. 5</ref> by the end of this period there are already [[signs]] that he is broadening the concept.
By the early 1950s [[Lacan's article "The Mirror Stage ]] no longer regards it simply as Formative of the I" (1936, 1949) lays out the parameters of a doctrine that he never foreswore, and which has subsequently become something of a post-structuralist mantra: namely, that human identity is 'decentred'. The key observation of Lacan’s essay concerns [[moment]] in the behaviour [[life]] of infants between the ages of 6 and 18 months. At this age[[infant]], Lacan notes, children become capable of recognising their mirror image. This is not a dispassionate experience, either. It is a recognition that brings the child great pleasure. For Lacan, we can only explain this 'jubilation' but sees it as also representing a testimony to how, in the recognition permanent [[structure]] of its mirror-image[[subjectivity]], the child is having its first anticipation paradigm of itself as a unified and separate individual. Before this time, Lacan contends (drawing on contemporary psychoanalytic observation), the child [[imaginary|imaginary order]]; it is little more than a 'body in bits and pieces', unable to clearly separate I and Other, and wholly dependant for its survival stadium (for a length of time unique in the animal kingdom) upon its first nurturers.The implications of this observation on the mirror stage, in Lacan's reckoning, are far-reaching. They turn around the fact that, if it holds, then the genesis of individuals' sense of individuation can in no way be held to issue from the 'organic’ or 'naturalstade' development of any inner wealth supposed to be innate within them. The I is an Other from the ground up, for Lacan (echoing and developing a conception of the ego already mapped out in Freud's Ego and Id). The truth of this dictum, as Lacan comments in "Aggressivity and Psychoanalysis", is evident in infantile transitivity: that phenomenon wherein one infant hit by another yet proclaims: 'I hit him!', and visa-versa. It is more simply registered in which the fact that it remains a permanent possibility of adult human experience for us to speak and think of ourselves in the second or third person. What [[subject]] is decisive in these phenomena, according to Lacan, is that the ego is at base an object: an artificial projection of subjective unity modelled on the visual images of objects permanently [[captation|caught]] and others that the individual confronts in the world. Identification with the ego, Lacan accordingly maintains, is what underlies the unavoidable component of aggressivity in human behaviour especially evident amongst infants, and which Freud recognised in [[captation|captivated]] by his Three Essays on Sexuality when he stressed the primordial ambivalence of children towards their love object(s) (in the oral phase, to love is to devour; in the anal phase, it is to master or destroy …).own [[image]]:
<blockquote>[the mirror [[stage]] is] a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold [[value]]. In the first [[place]], it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the [[mental]] development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential [[libidinal]] [[relationship]] with the [[body]]-image.<ref>{{L}} 1951b. "[[Works of Jacques Lacan|Some Reflections on the Ego]]," ''Int. J. [[Psycho]]-[[Anal]].'', vol. 34, 1953: 14</ref></blockquote>
== def=Dual Relationship===The young child's identification with his own image (what As Lacan terms further develops the "Ideal-I" or "ideal ego"), a stage that occurs anywhere from 6-18 months concept 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 [[mirror stage's misrecognition or méconnaissance (seeing an ideal-I where there is a fragmented]], chaotic body) subsequently "characterizes the ego in all stress falls less on 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[[development|historical value]]" and, through the imaginary, continues to assert ever more on its influence on the subject even after the subject enters the symbolic order. See the Lacan Module on Psychosexual Development[[structure|structural value]].
== def ==Thus by 1956 [[Lacan]] can say:
<blockquote>[[Jacques LacanThe mirror stage]] tells of the '''mirror stage''' is far from a mere phenomenon which occurs in his essay "The Mirror stage as formative of the function development 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 2002child. Lacan first delivered this essay as a talk at It illustrates the 16th International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Zurich on July 17 1949. In conflictual [[Jacques Lacannature]]'s [[psychoanalytic]] theory, the "mirror stage" (''le stade du miroir'') is of the point in an [[infantdual]]'s life when he may recognize his "[[self (philosophy)|self]]" in a mirror, and thus achieves [[consciousness]] of himselfrelationship.<ref>{{S4}} p.17</ref></blockquote>
When ===Ego Formation===The [[mirror stage]] describes the child sees itself in [[formation]] of the mirror, often propped up by another person or mechanical device and is able to associate [[ego]] via the image with itself, it retroactively posits that before this autonomy that it now perceives, its body was in "bits and pieces." At [[process]] of [[identification]]; the moment of perceiving bodily autonomy, Jane Gallop says there is jubilation, but it [[ego]] 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 result of regressing to this earlier stage[[identifying]] with one's own [[specular image]].
===Prematurity of Infant===The potential relation between facets key to this phenomenon lies in the [[helplessness|prematurity]] of the [[human]] [[infant|baby]]: at six months, the baby still [[lacks]] coordination. However, its [[visual]] [[system]] is relatively advanced, which means that it can recognize itself in the mirror stage and our relation to character archetypes has been explored in depth by theorists of entertainment mediabefore attaining [[control]] over its [[bodily]] movements.
==See also==* The [[Consciousnessbaby]]* sees its own [[Self-awarenessimage]]* as [[gestalt|whole]], and the Imaginary[[dialectic|synthesis]] of this [[image]] produces a [[sense]] of contrast with the uncoordination of the body, which is experienced as a [[fragmented body]]; this contrast is first felt by the [[infant]] as a [[rivalry]] with its own [[image]], because the [[gestalt|wholeness]] of the [[image]] threatens the subject with [[fragmentation]], and the [[mirror stage]] thereby gives rise to an [[aggressivity|aggressive tension]] between the [[subject]] and the [[specular image|image]].
In [[Categoryorder]] to resolve this [[aggressivity|aggressive tension]], the [[subject]] [[identifies]] with the [[image]]; this [[identification|primary identi­fication]] with the [[counterpart]] is what forms the [[ego]]. The moment of [[identifica­tion]], when the [[subject]] assumes its [[image]] as its own, is described by [[Lacan]] as a moment of jubilation,<ref>{{E}} p. 1</ref> since it leads to an [[imaginary]] sense of [[master|mastery]]: <blockquote>[the child's] joy is due to his imaginary triumph in anticipating a degree of muscular co-ordination which he has not yet actually achieved.<ref>{{L}} 1951b. "[[Works of Jacques Lacan|Some Reflections on the Ego]]," ''Int. J. Psycho-Anal.'', Vol. 34, 1953:Human development15; {{S1}} p. 79</ref></blockquote>  However, this jubilation may also be accompanied by a depressive reaction, when the [[child]]compares his own precarious sense of [[mastery]] with the omnipotence of the [[mother]].<ref>{{Ec}} p. 345; {{S4}} p. 186</ref> ===Ideal Ego===This [[identification]] also involves the [Category[ideal ego]] which functions as a promise of [[future]] [[gestalt|wholeness]] which sustains the [[ego]] in [[time|anticipation]]. The [[mirror stage]] shows that the [[ego]] is the product of [[méconnaissance|misunderstanding]] ([[méconnaissance]] and the site where the [[subject]] becomes [[alienation|alienated]] from himself. ===Imaginary and Symbolic===It represents the introduction of the [[subject]] into the [[imaginary order]]. However, the [[mirror stage]] also has an important [[symbolic|symbolic dimension]]. The [[symbolic order]] is [[present]] in the [[figure]] of the [[adult]] who is carrying or supporting the [[infant]].  The moment after the [[subject]] has jubilantly assumed his [[image]] as his own, he turns his head round towards this adult, who represents the [[big Other]], as if to call on him to ratify this [[image]].<ref>{{L}} ''[[Seminar X|Le Séminaire. Livre X. L'angoisse, 1962-3]]''. Unpublished. [[Seminar]] of 28 November 1962</ref> ===Narcissism===The [[mirror stage]] is also closely related to [[narcissism]], as the story of [[Narcissus]] clearly shows (in the Greek [[myth]], [[Narcissus]] falls in [[love]] with his own reflection).<ref>* "[[Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je]]." ''[[Écrits]]''. [[Paris]]: Seuil, 1966: 93-100 ["[[The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I]]." Trans. [[Alan Sheridan]]. ''[[Écrits: A Selection]]''. [[London]]: Tavistock, 1977; New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977:Psychoanalysis1-7].</ref> ==See Also=={{See}}* [[Aggressivity]]* [[Alienation]]* [[Biology]]||* [[Captation]]* [[Ego]]* [[Gestalt]]||* [[Ideal ego]]* [[Identification]]* [[Imaginary]]||* [[Master]]* [[Narcissism]]* [[Other]]||* [[Psychology]]* [[Specular image]]{{Also}} ==References==<div style="font-size:11px" class="references-small"><references/></div> {{OK}}[[Category:Philosophical terminologyImaginary]][[Category:LacanDevelopment]] __NOTOC__
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