HOW MANY CAN IDENTIFY WITH THIS?

A foundation to save the word SCHMUCK

NEW YORK--Saying he could no longer stand idly by while a vital part of American culture is lost forever, activist and Broadway producer Mel Brooks has founded a private non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the word "schmuck."

An emotional Brooks stopped short of kvetching at a schmuck fundraiser Monday.

"Schmuck is dying," a sober Brooks said during a 2,000-person rally held in his hometown of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Monday. "For many of us, saying 'schmuck' is a way of life. Yet when I walk down the street and see people behaving in foolish, pathetic, or otherwise schmucky ways, I hear only the words 'prick' and 'douche bag.' I just shake my head and think, 'I don't want to live in a world like this.'"

REFLECTING THE MIRROR STAGE

I had occasion to be reading about Mirror Stage Theory. A reflection proposed by psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacque Lacan.

Lacan

The mirror stage is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception (the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside of himself) from the age of about six months. Later research showed that, although children are fascinated with images of themselves and others in mirrors from about that age, they do not begin to recognize that the images in the mirror are reflections of their own bodies until the age of about 15 to 18 months. Of course, the experience is particular to each person.

Initially, Lacan proposed that the mirror stage was part of an infant's development from 6 to 18 months, as outlined in his first and only official contribution to larger psychoanalytic theory at the Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at Marienbad in 1936. By the early 1950s, Lacan's concept of the mirror stage had evolved: he no longer considered the mirror stage as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, or as the paradigm of "Imaginary order". This evolution in Lacan's thinking becomes clear in his later essay titled "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire."

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. (Lacan, Some reflections on the Ego, 1953)

On reflection, the longer one ponders the matter of the mirror, the less one sees it as a turning point in mental development. An interesting observation, and one can recall being fascinated by reflections; but a turning point?  Does a child blind from birth, suffer from a lack of mental development by not ‘seeing’ itself in a mirror. Is its identity impaired in some way? 

And while we're at it:

COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AND IDENTITY FORMATION STRATEGIES

Many people gain a sense of positive self-esteem from their identity groups, which furthers a sense of community and belonging. Another issue that researchers have attempted to address is the question of why people engage in discrimination, i.e., why they tend to favour those they consider a part of their "in-group" over those considered to be outsiders. Both questions have been given extensive as part of the social identity approach. For example, in work surrounding social identity theory it has been shown that merely crafting cognitive distinction between in- and out-groups can lead to subtle effects on people's evaluations of others.

Different social situations also compel people to attach themselves to different self-identities which may cause some to feel marginalized, thus traveling between different groups and self-identifications. These different selves lead to constructed images dichotomized between what people want to be (the ideal self) and how others see them (the limited self). Educational background and Occupational status and roles significantly influence identity formation in this regard.

Levine

Côté 

An issue of interest in social psychology is related to the notion that there are certain identity formation strategies which a person may use to adapt to the social world. Professors James E. Côté and Charles G Levine (both of Dpt. of Sociology, University Western Ontario) developed a typology which investigated the different manners of behaviour that individuals may have. Their typology includes:

	Psychological symptoms	Personality symptoms	Social symptoms
Refuser	Develops cognitive blocks that prevent adoption of adult role-schemas	Engages in childlike behaviour	Shows extensive dependency upon others and no meaningful engagement with the community of adults
Drifter	Possesses greater psychological resources than the Refuser (i.e., intelligence, charisma)	Is apathetic toward application of psychological resources	Has no meaningful engagement with or commitment to adult communities
Searcher	Has a sense of dissatisfaction due to high personal and social expectations	Shows disdain for imperfections within the community	Interacts to some degree with role-models, but ultimately these relationships are abandoned
Guardian	Possesses clear personal values and attitudes, but also a deep fear of change	Sense of personal identity is almost exhausted by sense of social identity	Has an extremely rigid sense of social identity and strong identification with adult communities
Resolver	Consciously desires self-growth	Accepts personal skills and competencies and uses them actively	Is responsive to communities that provide opportunity for self-growth

                                                                                                                          

Gergen

Kenneth Gergen (American psychologist and professor at Swarthmore College) formulated additional classifications, which include the strategic manipulator, the pastiche personality, and the relational self. The strategic manipulator is a person who begins to regard all senses of identity merely as role-playing exercises, and who gradually becomes alienated from his or her social "self". The pastiche personality abandons all aspirations toward a true or "essential" identity, instead viewing social interactions as opportunities to play out, and hence become, the roles they play. Finally, the relational self is a perspective by which persons abandon all sense of exclusive self, and view all sense of identity in terms of social engagement with others. For Gergen, these strategies follow one another in phases, and they are linked to the increase in popularity of postmodern culture and the rise of telecommunications technology.