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Mirror stage

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The first significant stage of infant development which Lacan discusses is the mirror stage. Taking place between the ages of six and eighteen months, the mirror stage is not merely a developmental stage which is left behind once it has been traversed, but "represents a fundamental [and enduring] aspect of the structure of subjectivity" (Evans 115). Starting with the notion that "there is a real specific prematurity of birth in man" (Ecrits 4), Lacan holds that the lack of motor control observed in human infants is countered by an advanced degree of visual ability. The disjunction between this underdeveloped motor control and advanced visual ability attains a formative status when the infant first beholds his or her own image, whether in a mirror or in the imitative actions of another person (Evans 190). Confronted with his or her own mirror image, the infant recognises it as his or her own. That is, at this point, the infant human undergoes a process of radical recognition whereby he or she projects the contents of his or her own consciousness onto the specular image with which he or she is confronted.9 In the infant’s budding consciousness, this projection results in a doubling whereby the specular image is perceived as recognising the infant in return. The infant recognises the image, but also perceives that the specular image recognises him or her – it opens up a new conceptual territory in its role as an entity that is both self and other at the same time. The traumatic aspect of this recognition comes from the infant’s recognition of the organic wholeness of the specular image, which stands in glaring contrast to the perceived fragmentation of his or her own body due to his or her underdeveloped motor ability. He or she recognises the specular image as his or her own, but simultaneously recognises a fundamental incompatibility, one which seems to indicate a wholeness in the specular image which is as yet unavailable to the individual: "this Gestalt […] symbolizes the mental permanence of the I, at the same time as it prefigures its alienating destination" (Ecrits 2).{{Top}}stade du miroir{{Bottom}}
This dual recognition produces two results, both of which are aspects of the same reaction. ==Jacques Lacan=====History===The first [[concept]] of these is that the infant admires the wholeness of the specular image and desires identification with that image. This [[mirror stage]] is [[Lacan]]'s first important contribution to [[psychoanalysis|psychoanalytic theory]], [[Lacan]]'s first innovation within the formation field of the ideal ego[[psychoanalysis]], which may loosely be conceived of as the unarticulated thought, "I want to be that (propounded at an [[IPA]] conference at [[Marienbad]] in which I perceive an ideal version of myself)[[{{Y}}|1936]]." The more detrimental aspect of this dual recognition concept is linked to this desire insofar as the urge to unite with the image is also a rivalrous urge to dominate and assimilate it. In this regard, the wholeness of the image is perceived as threatening because it points to the fragmented condition constant point of the infant’s body. Part of the infant’s desire to ascend to the same degree of organic wholeness perceived in the specular image is thus an aggressive tendency to become that image by consuming it, by emptying its content into himself or herself; i.e. by mastering it.10 To resolve the aggression this tension provokes, the infant identifies with the imagereference throughout [[Lacan]]'s [[Jacques Lacan:Bibliography|work]], suppressing any awareness of its difference and producing the imaginary formation known becomes increasingly [[complex]] as the ego (the always illusory and deceptive image one has of one’s self which it is). This advent of the ego "situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination, reworked in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the individual" (Ecrits 2). With the advent of the ego the individual enters the imaginary order and undertakes the lifelong series of identifications between ego and imaginary object (i.e. the imaginary attributes of a given object) which constitute the dynamic sense of "selfvarious different contexts."
===Child Psychology===The pre-eminent consequence of this accession to "[[mirror stage|mirror test]]" was first described by the imaginary order is that [[French]] [[psychology|psychologist]] and friend of the relationship between the newly formed ego and the specular image. Both [[Lacan]], Henri Wallon, in terms of the initiation into the imaginary order and the overall integrity of the RSI nexus1931, it is nearly impossible although [[Lacan]] attributes its discovery to Baldwin.<ref>{{E}} p. 1</ref> It refers to overestimate the force of this identification: "The imaginary exerts a captivating power over [[particular]] experiment which can differentiate the subject[[human]] [[infant]] from his closest [[animal]] relative, founded in the almost hypnotic effect of the specular image" (Evans 83)chimpanzee. The primary impact of this hypnotic effect is that it generates (in six-­month-old child differs from the very process chimpanzee of producing the ego) a process of alienation and méconnaissance (misrecognition) same age in that will both facilitate the individual’s accession to the symbolic order and plague him or her former becomes fascinated with a sense of incompleteness throughout life: "This moment its [[reflection]] in which the [[mirror-stage comes to an end inaugurates, by the identification with the imago of the counterpart ]] and the drama of primordial jealousy … the dialectic that will henceforth link the I to socially elaborated situations" (Ecrits 5). In identifying with a specular external jubilantly assumes it as its own [[image (which is then internalised as the ideal ego)]], whereas the infant undertakes a paradoxical process chimpanzee quickly realizes that is both irreversible and unsustainable. The conception of the self (ego) as identical with, yet threatened by and aggressive toward, the other (specular [[image) ]] is at bottom alienation pure and simple; seeing him or herself as the other and other as self makes the very notion of selfhood one typified by a perpetual oscillation between projection [[illusory]] and assimilation. The self and other are thus two sides of the same process, at the heart of which is alienation; they are mutually dependent on each other for their definitions, imaginatively existing while loses interest in reality merely ex-sisting: "The ego and the counterpart form the prototypical dual relationship, and are interchangeable. This relationship whereby the ego is constituted by identification with the little other means that the ego, and the imaginary order itself, are both sites of a radical alienation" (Evans 82). As Lacan says, although in an inversion of terms which reveals the mutually constitutive relationship of alienation to the imaginary, "alienation is constitutive of the imaginary order" (qtd. in Evans 82). Alienation, the ability to think the self as other and the other as self is thus the defining feature of the I, the basis for the fantasy of selfhoodit.
== def =Structure of Subjectivity===The [[mirror stageLacan]] is described in Lacan's essay, "The Mirror Stage as formative in concept of the function [[mirror stage]] represents a fundamental aspect of the ''I'' as revealed in psychoanalytic experience", the first [[structure]] of his ''Écrits'', which remains one of his seminal papers[[subjectivity]]. Some have crudely put this as the point at which the child 'recognises' him Whereas in [[{{Y}}|1936- or herself in the mirror image49]], but this is unfaithful [[Lacan]] seems to what Lacan has in mind and also confuses his terminology. Lacan's emphasis here see it is on the process of ''identification'' with an outside image or entity induced through, as he puts it, "insufficiency to anticipation – and a [[development|stage]] which manufactures for the subject, caught up can be located at a specific [[time]] in the lure [[development]] of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from [[child]] with a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic – beginning (six months) 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'' end (rvd. edn., 2002eighteen months), 'The mirror stage', <ref>{{E}} p. 5)</ref> by the end of this period there are already [[signs]] that he is broadening the concept.
It is significant that this process of identification is By the first step towards the manufacture of the subject because all that follows early 1950s [[Lacan]] no longer regards it - the transition into the Imaginary and the Symbolic order - is based on this misrecognition (''méconnaissance''): this is the process that Lacan detects simply as manifesting itself at every subsequent identification with another person, identity (''not'' to be confused with 'identification') or suchlike throughout the subject's life. This is the start of a lifelong process of identifying the self [[moment]] in terms of the Other. What is also occasionally overlooked is the experiential basis [[life]] of Lacan's early paper. As one writer has observed: "To evidence concerning the role of the other in childhood – the situation known as "transitivism," for instance[[infant]], where the child will impute his own actions to another – Lacan adds evidence from animal biology, where but sees it has been experimentally shown that as also representing a perceptual relationship to another permanent [[structure]] 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." ([[Anthony Wildensubjectivity]], "Lacan and the discourse paradigm of the Other" in Lacan, [[imaginary|imaginary order]]; it is a stadium (''The Language of the Self: the Function of Language in Psychoanalysisstade'', trans. Anthony Wilden (London ) in which the [[subject]] is permanently [[captation|caught]] and Baltimore[[captation|captivated]] by his own [[image]]: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 159 – 160.)
<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===As Lacan further develops the concept of the [[mirror stage]], the stress falls less on its "[[development|historical value]]" and ever more on its [[structure|structural value]].
Thus by 1956 [[Lacan's article "The Mirror Stage 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 the behaviour of infants between the ages of 6 and 18 months. At this age, 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' as a testimony to how, in the recognition of its mirror-image, the child is having its first anticipation of itself as a unified and separate individual. Before this time, Lacan contends (drawing on contemporary psychoanalytic observation), the child is little more than a 'body in bits and pieces', unable to clearly separate I and Other, and wholly dependant for its survival (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 'natural' 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 proclaimssay: 'I hit him!', and visa-versa. It is more simply registered in 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 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 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 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 …).
<blockquote>[[The mirror stage]] is far from a mere phenomenon which occurs in the development of the child. It illustrates the conflictual [[nature]] of the [[dual]] relationship.<ref>{{S4}} p. 17</ref></blockquote>
== def=Ego Formation===The young child's identification with his own image (what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I" or "ideal ego"), a [[mirror stage that occurs anywhere from 6-18 months of age. For Lacan, this act marks ]] describes the primordial recognition [[formation]] 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 [[ego]] via the ego in all its structures" (Écrits 6). In particular, this creation of an ideal version [[process]] of [[identification]]; the self gives pre-verbal impetus to [[ego]] is the creation result of narcissistic phantasies in the fully developed subject. That fantasy [[identifying]] with one's own [[specular 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 =Prematurity of Infant===The 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 before attaining [[control]] over its [[bodily]] movements.
The [[baby]] sees its own [[image]] as [[Jacques Lacangestalt|whole]], and the [[dialectic|synthesis]] tells of the '''mirror stage''' in his essay "The Mirror stage as formative this [[image]] produces a [[sense]] of contrast with the function uncoordination of the ''I'' as revealed in psychoanalytic experiencebody," which was published in English in ''Écrits: A Selection'', is experienced as a [[fragmented body]]; this contrast is first felt by Alan Sheridan in 1977, and more recently by Bruce Fink in 2002. Lacan first delivered this essay the [[infant]] as a talk at [[rivalry]] with its own [[image]], because the 16th International Congress [[gestalt|wholeness]] of Psychoanalysis in Zurich on July 17 1949. In the [[Jacques Lacanimage]]'s threatens the subject with [[psychoanalyticfragmentation]] theory, and the "[[mirror stage" (''le stade du miroir'') is the point in ]] thereby gives rise to an [[infantaggressivity|aggressive tension]]'s life when he may recognize his "between the [[self (philosophy)|selfsubject]]" in a mirror, and thus achieves the [[consciousnessspecular image|image]] of himself.
When In [[order]] to resolve this [[aggressivity|aggressive tension]], the child sees itself in [[subject]] [[identifies]] with the mirror, often propped up by another person or mechanical device and [[image]]; this [[identification|primary identi­fication]] with the [[counterpart]] is able to associate what forms the image with itself, it retroactively posits that before this autonomy that it now perceives, its body was in "bits and pieces[[ego]]." At the The moment of perceiving bodily autonomy[[identifica­tion]], Jane Gallop says there is jubilationwhen the [[subject]] assumes its [[image]] as its own, but it is short lived. As soon described by [[Lacan]] as the infant can posit that prior to this a moment it was in "bits and piecesof jubilation," <ref>{{E}} p. 1</ref> since it recognizes the danger leads to an [[imaginary]] sense of regressing to this earlier stage. [[master|mastery]]:
The potential relation between facets of <blockquote>[the mirror stage and our relation child's] joy is due to character archetypes his imaginary triumph in anticipating a degree of muscular co-ordination which he has been explored in depth by theorists not yet actually achieved.<ref>{{L}} 1951b. "[[Works of entertainment mediaJacques Lacan|Some Reflections on the Ego]]," ''Int. J. Psycho-Anal.'', Vol. 34, 1953: 15; {{S1}} p.79</ref></blockquote>
==See However, this jubilation may also==* be accompanied by a depressive reaction, when the [[Consciousnesschild]]* compares his own precarious sense of [[Self-awarenessmastery]]* with the omnipotence of the [[the Imaginarymother]].<ref>{{Ec}} p. 345; {{S4}} p. 186</ref>
===Ideal Ego===
This [[identification]] also involves the [[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: 1-7].</ref>
 
==See Also==
{{See}}
* [[Aggressivity]]
* [[Alienation]]
* [[Biology]]
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* [[Captation]]
* [[Ego]]
* [[Gestalt]]
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* [[Ideal ego]]
* [[Identification]]
* [[Imaginary]]
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* [[Master]]
* [[Narcissism]]
* [[Other]]
||
* [[Psychology]]
* [[Specular image]]
{{Also}}
 
==References==
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[[Category:Imaginary]]
[[Category:Development]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]][[Category:Jacques Lacan]]__NOTOC__
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