Talk:Le stade du miroir

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Lacan first presented his views on the nature of the ego to the Fourteenth International Psycho-Analytical Congress at Marienbad, July 31, 1936, but failed to submit a written text to be included in the proceedings of the Congress.

Hence the present text, dating from 13 years later, si thef irst full articulation of this important theme that we have.

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The mirror stage sheds light on the formation of the I.

The child jubilantly recognizes his own iamge in the mirror from the age of six months, with far-reaching effects on his development.

The mirror image stage is an identification in which the subject is transformed.

This assumption of his iamge by the child precipitates the I in a primordial form, prior to the form's soscial determination. This form orients the agency of the ego in a "fictional direction," and will remain irreducibly discordant with the subject's own reality.

The preconditions for this spatial captation are man's organiz insuffiency, requiring that his relation to nature be mediated by an image; and man's prematurity at birth.

The process involves the anticipation of bodily maturation in a gestalt which is exterior, of different size, and whose symmetry is reversed, leading to a rigid stucture of the I, alienation, etc.


The ego is not centered on the perception-consciousness sytem or the reality principle, but is characterized by the function of miscognition (mEconnaissance).