Chapter 9 Lacan’s mirror stage

The source of the ego The source of the ego (revisiting Freud) Ego as mental projection of the body’s surface Narcissism: the ego arising through self- love Ego as outcome of transition from pleasure to reality principle The role of the superego

The physiological & psychological challenges facing the newborn infant Humans are always born prematurely They lack basic sensorimotor control They are unable to control bodily functions The early months are filled with anxiety, uneasiness and ‘discord’ Making up a daunting set of challenges facing the infant Requiring a unique psychical solution 1. Prematuration

The physiological & psychological challenges facing the newborn infant Helplessness has a profound effect on physical development Infant is a centre-less mass of needs & sensations No sense of separateness from world or mother No sense of being a separate person in its own right Does not possess an ‘I’, a fledgling identity Neither physically nor psychologically distinct from the world around it 2. Separation & Individuation

The physiological & psychological challenges facing the newborn infant The infant’s sense of the world is fragmentary, shapeless and undifferentiated It has no sense of where its body ends and where the world begins Its limbs are not seen as necessarily its own, nor as parts of its own bodily whole The little scrambled person 3. The ‘hommelette’

The physiological & psychological challenges facing the newborn infant The primal relation we have to our own bodies Enacted by children when they pull off the heads and limbs of dolls Aggressive images and phanatsies of dismemberment ‘the burden of all self-aware and membered creatures’ 4. Corps morcele the body in pieces

The image of the self How does the infant overcome these physiological and psychological challenges? Through accommodating an image of the self - the fundamental activity of Lacan’s mirror stage - a key developmental event, occurring between the ages of 6 and 18 months.

What is meant by “the image”? Visual reflections in a mirror of one’s own physical appearance Reflections of the self through a range of interactions with others A revelation of self- recognition Understanding how one’s body fits together, how one might control it, and where it ends and the world begins A developing sense of separateness

What is meant by “the image”? The child comes to see its own body as a total form, a gestalt But in a gestalt there is the possibility of illusion and trickery The statue symbolises the mental permanence of the ‘I’ A means through which the infant projects its own mental & bodily permanence

What is meant by “the image”? The beginning of narcissism The infant falls in love with its image Has both an erotic and an aggressive character For Lacan, narcissism is an absolutely fundamental aspect of human psychology across cultures and across history.

The enabling function of the image ‘the mirror image anticipates the mastery of the body that the infant has not yet objectively achieved’ (Lacan, 1977,20) Identification: The trans- formative process whereby a child takes on an image Mimicry: Whereby a child learns by reproducing the movements & activities of others (or its own image) An adaptive activity The image of the self acts as a triggering mechanism for certain instinctual responses

Implications of our identification with the image Captation by the image (seduction and capture) Meconnaissance (deception) Identification and primal rivalry with the self (love and hate; self-love and self-hate) Transvitism (overidentification; taking on the other as self)

Alienation as human psychic destiny The paradox of the mirror image: it is two contrasting things at once it IS the child (by it is NOT the child virtue of the fact but something that it is exactly outside of it - the child’s reflection)a reflection only There is thus always something alien, external at the basis of the ego, at our basic understandings of ‘I’. ‘The “alienating destination” of the “I” is such that the individual is permanently in discord with himself’ (Evans, 1996, 9)

Critiques of Lacan Writing style is obscure and ambiguous making interpretation difficult The mirror stage is an influential theory Appeals to post-structural and post-modern debates about fragmentation and multiplicity of self Mainstream developmental psychology still unconvinced