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{{Title}}By [[Jacques Lacan]]{{Author}}<BR>==Introduction==The conception of the [[mirror stage that ]]-[[phase]] which I introduced [. . .] at our last congress, thirteen years ago, has since become more or less established in the [[practice ]] of the [[French [psychoanalytic]] group. However, ; I [[think ]] it nevertheless worthwhile to bring it again to your attention, especially today, for the light that it sheds on the [[formation ]] of the I as we [[experience]] it in [[psychoanalysis]].<ref>''Translator's note'': '<i>I</i> as we experience it ' is used here and throughout to translate [[Lacan]]'s '<i>je</i>', in 'le <i>je</i>', 'la [[fonction]] du <i>je</i>', etc. '<i>Ego</i>' translates 'le <i>moi</i>' and is used in psychoanalysisthe normal [[sense]] of [[psychoanalytic]] [[literature]]. On '<i>je</i>', see Note 2 below. </ref> It is an experience that which leads us to oppose any [[philosophy ]] directly issuing from the <i>''[[Cogito</i> [reference is to the tradition stemming from Descartes : I think, therefore I am etc]]''.]

Some of you may recall that this conception originated perhaps [[remember]] our starting point in a feature of [[human behavior ]] [[behaviour]] illuminated by a fact of comparative [[psychology]]. The childhuman offspring, at an age when he is for a [[time]], however short, outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize as such his own [[image ]] in a mirror. This [[recognition]] manifests itself in the illuminatory [[mimicry]] of the ''AhaErlebnis'', which Köhler sees as the expression of situational apperception, an essential [[moment]] of the act of intelligence. . .]

This act, far from exhausting itself, as in with the case of the monkeychimpanzee, once the image has been mastered and found empty, immediately rebounds in the case of the [[child ]] immediately rebounds in a series of gestures in which he playfully experiences in play the relation between relations of the assumed movements assumed in of the image and to the reflected [[environment]], and between of this [[virtual ]] [[complex and ]] to the [[reality ]] it reduplicates --the child's own [[body]], and the persons and or even things around himin his proximity.

This [[event ]] can take [[place [. . .] ], as we have known since Baldwin, from the age of six months, and its [[repetition ]] has often made me reflect upon compelled us to ponder over the startling [[spectacle ]] of the infant nurseling in front of the mirror. Unable as yet to walk, or even to stand up, and held tightly narrowly confined as he is by within some support, human or artificial (what, in [[. . .France]], we call a ''trotte-bébé''), he nevertheless overcomessurmounts, in a flutter of jubilant [[activity]], the obstructions of his support and, fixing in [[order]] to fix his attitude I in a slightly more or less leaning-forward [[position]], in order to hold it in his gaze, brings and bring back an instantaneous aspect of the imageto hold it in his [[gaze]].

For meus, this activity retains the [[meaning I ]] we have given it up to the age of eighteen months. This meaning discloses a [[libidinal ]] dynamism, which has hitherto remained problematic, as well as an [[ontological ]] [[structure ]] of the human [[world that ]] which accords with my our reflections on [[paranoiac ]] [[knowledge]].

We have only to [[understand ]] the mirror stage <i>-phase ''as an [[identification</i>]]'', in the [[full ]] sense that which [[analysis ]] gives to the term: namely, the transformation that which takes place in the [[subject ]] when he assumes an image - whose [[predestination ]] to this phase-effect is sufficiently indicated by the use, in analytic analytical [[theory]], of the ancient old term <i>''[[imago</i> [this is also a term from Jungian psychology]]''.

This jubilant assumption of his specular mirror-image by the child little man, at the <i>''[[infans</i>]]'' [[stage]], still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependencenurseling dependency, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary [[situation ]] the [[symbolic ]] [[matrix ]] in which the <i>I</i> is precipitated in a primordial [[form]], before it is objectified in the [[dialectic ]] of identification with the [[other]], and before [[language ]] restores to it, in the [[universal]], its function as subject.

This form would have to be called the ''[[Ideal]]-I ''<ref>Throughout this article we leave in its peculiarity the [[translation]] we have adopted for [[Freud]]'s <i>Ideal-Ich</i> (i. e. '<i>je-idéal</i>'), without further comment, save that we have not maintained it since.]</ref>, if we wanted to restore it to a familiar scheme, in the sense that it will also be the root-stock for secondary identifications, among which we place the functions of libidinal normalization. But the important point is that this form situates the agency [[instance]] of the ''ego'', before its [[social ]] determination, in a fictional direction, which will always remain irreducible for the [[individual ]] alone, or rather, which will only rejoin the coming-into-being [[development]] of the subject only asymptotically, whatever the success of the [[dialectical ]] syntheses by which he must resolve as <i>''I</i> '' his discordance with his own reality.

==The fact is that the total form of the body by which the subject anticipates in a mirage the maturation of his power is given to him only Body as <i>Gestalt</i> [an image of a whole], that is to say, in an exteriority in which this form is certainly more constituent than constituted, but in which it appears to him above all in a contrasting size that fixes it and in a symmetry that inverts it, in contrast with the turbulent movements that the subject feels are animating him. Thus, this <i>Gestalt</i> -- whose pregnancy should be regarded as bound up with the species, though its motor style remains scarcely recognizable - by these two aspects of its appearance, symbolizes the mental permanence of the <i>I</i>, at the same time as it prefigures its alienating destination; it is still pregnant with the correspondences that unite the <i>I</i> with the statue in which man projects himself, with the phantoms that dominate him, or with the automation in which, in an ambiguous relation, the world of his own making tends to find completion. ==

The fact is that the [[. . . Ttotal]]he mirror-image would seem to be the threshold form of the visible world, if we go body by which the mirror disposition that subject anticipates in a mirage the <i>imago [[maturation]] of onehis [[power]] is given to him only as ''[[Gestalt]]''s own body</i> presents , that is to say in an exteriority in which this form is certainly more constituent than constituted, but in which it appears to him above all in a contrasting size that fixes it and a symmetry that inverts it which are in hallucinations or dreams [. . .[conflict]] or if we observe with the role turbulence of the mirror apparatus in motions which the subject feels animating him. Thus, this ''Gestalt'' -- whose pregnancy should be regarded as linked to the [[species]], though its motor style remains unrecognizable -- by these twin aspects of its [[appearance]], symbolizes the appearances [[mental]] permanence of the <i>double</i>''I'', at the same time as it prefigures its [[alienating]] destination; it is pregnant with the correspondences which unite the ''I'' with the statue in which man projects himself, with the phantoms which dominate him, or finally, with the psychical realities[[automaton]] in which, however heterogeneousin an ambiguous relation, are manifestedthe world of his fabrication tends to find completion.

That a Indeed, where ''imagos'' are concerned -- whose veiled faces it is our privilege to see in [[outline]] in our daily experience and the penumbra of symbolic efficacity<iref>GestaltCf. Claude Lévi-[[Strauss]], ''[[Structural]] [[Anthropology]]'', [[London]] [[1968]], Chapter X.</iref> should -- the mirror-image would seem to be capable the threshold of formative effects in the organism is attested [[visible]] world, if we go by a piece of biological experimentation that is itself so alien to the idea mirror disposition which the ''imago of psychical causality that our own body'' presents in [[hallucinations]] or [[dreams]], whether it cannot bring itself to formulate concerns its results in these terms. It nevertheless recognizes that it is a necessary condition for the maturation of the gonad of the female pigeon that it should see another member of individual features, or even its speciesinfirmities, of either sex: so sufficient in itself is this condition that or its [[object]]-projections; or if we notice the desired effect may be obtained merely by placing the individual [pigeon[role]] within reach of the field of reflection of a mirror. Similarly, [[apparatus]] in the case appearances of the migratory locust''[[double]]'', the transition within a generation from the solitary to the gregarious form can be obtained by exposing the individualin which [[psychic]] realities, at a certain stagehowever heterogeneous, to the exclusively visual action of a similar image, provided it is animated by movements of a style sufficiently close to that characteristic of the species. Such facts are inscribed in an order of homeomorphic identification that would itself fall within the larger question of the meaning of beauty as both formative and erogenic[[manifest]] themselves.

But the fact facts of mimicry are no less instructive when conceived as cases of heteromorphic identification, in as much inasmuch as they raise the problem of the signification [[significance]] of [[space ]] for the [[living ]] organism - ; [[psychological ]] [[concepts ]] hardly seem less appropriate for shedding light on these matters than ridiculous attempts to reduce [[them ]] to the supposedly supreme law of [[adaptation]]. Let us only [[recall]] how Roger [[Caillois]] (who was then very young, and still fresh from his breach with the sociological [[school]] of his [[training]]) illuminated the subject by using the term '<i>legendary psychasthenia</i>' to classify morphological mimicry as an [[obsession]] with space in its derealizing effect. . .]

I am We are therefore led, therefore, to [[regard ]] the function of the mirror-stage phase as a [[particular ]] case of the function of the <i>''imago</i>'', which is to establish a relation between of the organism and to its reality -- or, as they say, between of the <i>''Innenwelt</i> '' to the ''[interior world[Umwelt] and the <i>Umwelt</i> [exterior world]''.

In man, however, this relation to nature is altered impaired by a certain kind of dehiscence at the heart of the organismin the womb, a primordial Discord betrayed by the [[signs ]] of uneasiness discomfort and motor uncoordination inco-ordination of the neo-natal neonatal months. The [[objective ]] [[notion ]] of the [[anatomical ]] [[incompleteness ]] of the pyramidal [of humans[ system]] and likewise the [[presence ]] of certain humoral residues of the [[maternal ]] organism confirm the view I we have formulated as the fact of a [[real <i>]] ''specific [[prematurity ]] of [[birth</i> ]]'' in man.

It is worth notingLet us note, incidentally, that this is in a fact fully recognized as such by embryologists, by the term <i>''foetalization</i> '', which determines the prevalence of the so-called superior apparatus of the neurax, and especially of the cortex, which [[psycho]]-surgical operations lead us to regard as the intra-organic mirror. . . . ]

This development is experienced lived as a [[temporal ]] dialectic that which decisively projects the formation of the individual into [[history. The <i>]]; the ''mirror stage</i> -phase'' is a drama whose [[internal thrust is precipitated ]] impulse rushes from insufficiency to [[anticipation - ]] and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in captive to the [[lure ]] of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a [[fragmented body]]-image to a form of its [[totality that I ]] which we shall call orthopaedic - and, lastly, to the assumption , finally, of the armour of an alienating [[identity]], which will mark stamp with the rigidity of its rigid structure the [[whole]] of the subject's entire mental development. Thus, to break out of the circle of the <i>''Innenwelt</i> '' into the <i>''Umwelt</i> '' generates the inexhaustible endless quadrature of the inventorying of the ego's verifications.

CorrelativelyThis fragmented body, the formation term for which I have introduced into our [[theoretical]] [[frame]] of the <i>I</i> is symbolized reference, regularly manifests itself in dreams by when the movement of the analysis encounters a fortress, or a stadium - its inner arena and enclosure, surrounded by marshes and rubbish-tips, dividing it into two opposed fields certain level of contest where [[aggressive]] disintegration in the subject flounders individual. It then appears in quest the form of the leftydisjointed limbs, remote inner castle whose form (sometimes juxtaposed or of those organs figured in exoscopy, growing wings and taking up arms for intestinal persecutions -- the very same scenario) symbolizes that the id visionary Hieronymus Bosch has fixed, for all time, in a quite startling way. Similarly painting, as they climbed, on in the mental planefifteenth century, we find realized to the structures [[imaginary]] zenith of fortified worksmodern man, but this form is even tangibly revealed at the organic level, in the metaphor lines of 'fragilization' which arises spontaneouslydefine the anatomy of [[phantasy]], as if issuing from exhibited in the schizoid and spasmodic [[symptoms themselves, to designate the mechanisms ]] of obsessional neurosis - inversion, isolation, reduplication, cancellation and displacement[[hysteria]].

But if we were to build on these subjective givens alone - however little we free them from Correlatively, the condition of experience that makes us see them as partaking formation of the nature of ''I'' is [[symbolized]] in dreams by a fortress, or a linguistic technique stadium -- its inner arena and enclosure, surrounded by marshes and rubbish- our theoretical attempts would remain exposed to tips, dividing it into two opposed fields of contest where the charge subject flounders in quest of projecting themselves into the unthinkable of an absolute subject. This is why I have sought haughty and remote inner castle, which, in its shape (sometimes juxtaposed in the present hypothesissame scenario), grounded symbolizes the ''id'' in a conjunction startling fashion. Similarly, on the mental plane, we find realized the structures of fortified works, the [[metaphor]] of objective datawhich arises spontaneously, and as if issuing from the guiding grid for a method symptoms themselves, to describe the mechanisms of symbolic reduction[[obsessional]] [[neurosis]] -- [[inversion]], [[isolation]], reduplication, cancellation and [[displacement]].

It establishes in the defenses of the ego a genetic order But were we to build on this merely [[. . . subjective]] and situates (as against a frequently expressed prejudice) hysterical repression and its returns at a more archaic stage than obsessional inversion and its isolating processesdata, and should this be detached from the latter in turn as preliminary to paranoiac alienation, experiential condition which dates would make us derive it from a language [[technique]], our theoretical enterprise would remain exposed to the deflection charge of projecting itself into the specular I into unthinkable of an absolute subject. That is why we have to find in the [[present]] hypothesis, grounded in a conjunction of objective data, the social Iguiding grid for a ''method of symbolic reduction''.

This moment in which the mirror stage -phase comes to an end inaugurates , by the identification with the ''imago '' of the counterpart fellow and the drama of primordial [[jealousy ]] (so well brought out high-lighted by the school of Charlotte Bühler in the phenomenon of [[infantile ]] ''[[transitivism]]''), the dialectic that which will henceforth link the I to socially elaborated situations.

It is this moment that decisively tips shakes the whole of human knowledge into in the mediatization through by the desire of the other, constitutes its [[objects ]] in an abstract equivalence by virtue of the co-operation competition of othersthe other, and turns makes the ''I '' into that apparatus system for which every [[instinctual ]] thrust constitutes a [[danger]], even though it should correspond to a natural maturation -- the very normalization of this maturation [[being ]] henceforth dependent, in man, on a [[cultural mediation ]] go-between, as exemplified, in the case of the [[sexual ]] object, by the [[Oedipus ]] complex.

In the light of this conception, the term primary [[narcissism]], by which analytical [. . .[doctrine]] We can thus understand denotes the inertia libidinal investment characteristic of that moment, reveals in those who invented it the formations most profound [[awareness]] of semantic latencies. But it also illuminates the I[[dynamic]] opposition of that [[libido]] to sexual libido, which they tried to define when they invoked destructive and find there , indeed, [[death]] [[instincts]], in order to explain the most extensive definition of neurosis - just as evident connection between [[narcissistic]] libido and the captation alienating function of the subject by ''I'', the situation gives us [[aggressiveness]] which it releases in any relation to the most general formula for madnessother, not only the madness albeit that lies behind the walls of asylums, but also the madness that deafens the world with its sound and furymost Samaritan aid.

At this junction of nature and culture, They were encountering that existential negativity whose reality is so persistently examined warmly advocated by modern anthropology, psychoanalysis alone recognizes this knot the contemporary philosophy of imaginary servitude that love must always undo again, or severbeing and nothingness.

For such But unfortunately that philosophy grasps negativity only within the confines of a task[[self]]-sufficiency of [[consciousness]], which, we place no trust in altruistic feelingas one of its premisses, we who lay bare the aggressivity that underlies [[links]] to the activity constitutive mis-recognitions of the philanthropistego, the idealist[[illusion]] of autonomy to which it entrusts itself. This flight of fancy, for all that it draws, to an unusual extent, the pedagogueon borrowings from psychoanalytic experience, and even culminates in the reformerpretension to provide an [[existential psychoanalysis]].

At the climax of the historical attempt of a [[society]] to refuse to recognize that it has any function other than the utilitarian one, and in the anguish of the individual confronting the concentrational form of the social bond which seems to arise to crown this attempt, [[existentialism]] must be judged by the account it gives of the subjective dilemmas which it has indeed given rise to: the [[freedom]] which never claims more authenticity than when it is within the walls of a prison; the [[demand]] for commitment, expressing the [[impotence]] of a pure consciousness to [[master]] any situation; the voyeuristic-[[sadistic]] [[idealization]] of the sexual [[relationship]]; the [[personality]] which realizes itself only in [[suicide]]; the awareness of the other which can be [[satisfied]] only by [[Hegelian]] [[murder]]. These propositions are denied by all our experience, inasmuch as it teaches us not to regard the ego as centred on the ''[[perception]]-consciousness system'', or as organized by the 'reality [[principle]]' -- a principle which is the expression of a scientistic prejudice most hostile to the dialectic of knowledge. Our experience shows that we should start instead from the ''function of [[misrecognition]]'' which characterizes the ego in all its structures, so markedly articulated by Miss Anna Freud. For, if the ''[[Verneinung]]'' represents the patent form of that function, its effects will, for the most part, remain [[latent]], so long as they are not illuminated by a light reflected in the plane of fatality, where the ''id'' is revealed.  We can thus understand the inertia characteristic of the [[formations]] of the ''I'', and find there the most extensive definition of neurosis -- even as the ensnarement of the subject by the situation which gives us the most general [[formula]] for [[madness]], not only the madness which lies behind the walls of asylums, but also the madness which deafens the world with its sound and fury. The sufferings of neurosis and [[psychosis]] are for us the school of the passions of the soul, just as the scourge of the psychoanalytic scales, when we compute the tilt of their [[threat]] to entire communities, gives us the [[index]] of the deadening of the passions of the city. At this junction of nature and [[culture]] which is so persistently scanned by modern anthropology, psychoanalysis alone recognizes this [[knot]] of imaginary servitude which [[love]] must always undo again, or sever. For such a task we place no reliance on altruistic [[feeling]], we who lay bare the aggressiveness that underlies the activity of the philanthropist, the idealist, the pedagogue, and even the reformer. In the recourse of subject to subject that which we preserverpreserve, psychoanalysis may can accompany the [[patient ]] to the ecstatic [[limit ]] of the "Thous 'Thou art that." in which ', wherein is revealed to him the cipher of his mortal destiny, but it is not in our mere power as practitioners to bring him to that point where the real journey beingsbegins. ( 1949 -- ''translated'' by Jean Roussel)  ==Notes==<references/>* [http://www.ny-liability-insurance.com/ Liability Insurance NY] ==See Also==* [[Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je]]* [[Mirror stage]] __NOEDITSECTION__

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