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