THE MIRROR STAGE

The world has swallowed the American myth about the Presidency of the United States, that it is the most powerful office in the free world, if not THE world. It is also a myth that proliferates and engulfs the mind of Donald Trump. There are various reasons why I believe this to be the case. 

Born in New York, I grew up partly in America, and partly in Europe. My very early years were spent in the United States where I attended primary school, and learned to read and write in English. I do recall, in some small detail, that, like all the other kids at Pennington School in Mount Vernon, New York, I was taught the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America. I started school in 1947, only two years after the end of the 2nd World War. The United States was on a high, whilst the rest of the world, notably Europe and the Far East, were struggling to get back to some form of normality and economic stability. The United States initiated the Marshall Plan in 1948 in order to provide economic assistance to Western Europe as well as a bulwark against the Iron Curtain established by the Soviet Union, and marking the west’s resistance to the communist world. At the time, the United States was the only nation able to do this and it grew in military as well as economic power. One was indoctrinated to believe that the United States was the most powerful country on earth. 

Being at an American school during this time, I had begun to be indoctrinated into the spirit and myth of American power as the saviour of the world. We all were. Moving to Europe in 1949. I continued with my primary education learning to read and write in French. We lived in Le Cannet and I attended a school in Cannes. I was an American kid that my French classmates were very curious about and,  I assume, imbued me with all the propaganda that was being dished out at the time. France was a recipient of lots of economic assistance under the Marshall Plan and the United States Naval Forces Mediterranean (soon to be called the 6th Fleet) had temporarily parked an Aircraft Carrier just off the Cannes seafront in the Bay of Cannes. Indeed, my family, and others, had been invited on board for some publicity visits to the accompaniment of a Naval Band playing the Stars and Stripes and other such marches.  Americans sailors were ever present and the dollar went a long way. My class mates clearly were of the view that all Americans were strong and rich. So I benefited from this impression, and because of that, I began to believe it as well. Why wouldn’t I? 

My family returned to the United States and in 1952 we were in California, where I attended my final primary school in Beverly Hills. The American propaganda machine was re-enforced. 

We retuned to France in 1953 and I subsequently attended a  Lycée on the outskirts of Paris. The American myth was till very much in vogue.  The power of the United States was still supreme and Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force that made the D Day landings and liberated France, was now President of the United States. The dollar was still the king of currencies and America was booming. The only fly in the ointment, that began to penetrate my mind, was the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Stickers, pasted on lampposts and trees had appeared in our town, depicting Eisenhower as Nosferatu hovering over a trembling couple with the words “Sauvez les Rosenbergs”.  The idea that the American President could be an evil vampire was puzzling, but still the myth played on. 

We returned to California in 1956 where I attended Beverly Hills High School, where the Pledge Of Allegiance was renewed. Full force Americana was taking place, but so were the seeds of doubt  in my mind,  and I subsequently removed myself back to Europe on the 4th July 1965. Nonetheless the idea of the Powerful Presidency remained. So did it remain in the minds of most of the western powers that aligned themselves with the United States, snd sill does. 

Donald Trump, only three years younger, grew up wholly in America during this time, with a great deal more wealth and privilege. He is still the infant that would have gone through an even deeper indoctrination into American mythology than I. He still relates to Dell Comics and Superman. He is the complete “Where were you in 1962?”. He is American Graffiti through and through, and just as disoriented, chaotic and capricious. He relies on what he would call  his instinct. His mind operates like Gwendolyn Fairfax. “My first impressions are invariably correct”  which she repeats each time she changes her mind. So does Trump repeat his contradictions without a care in the world as if he’d never said whatever nonsense he said before. As an instance in point, he claims never to have said, about Hillary Clinton, “Lock her up” despite numerous recording and videos showing he said exactly that.

There is an interesting take on Trump by Erik Baker in the July 2025 edition for Harpers, “Easy Chair -Trump’s Darwinian America” wherein Mr Baker quotes Trump as saying “I’m a very instinctual person, but my instinct turns out to be right”. Mr Baker goes on to state:

“The veneration of instinct has led many observers to describe Trump as a social Darwinist.This interpretation of Darwin’s work, celebrating the triumph of the strong and the extermination of the weak, is a common thread uniting the otherwise ideologically disparate set of historical leaders Trump has praised from the American Empire builders of the late nineteenth century to (according to his former chief of staff John Kelly) Adolf Hitler.”

There is a piece in the Guardian 25/06/25, by Rafael Behr which begins:

“It was as close as Donald Trump might get to a lucid statement of his governing doctrine. “I may do it. I may not do it." the president said to reporters on the White House lawn. “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”….
Behr goes on:
“Volatile inconsistency is a trait of the presidential personality, but also a learned management technique. Keeping everyone around you guessing, lurching from charm to menaces, swapping and dropping favourites on a whim – these are methods of coercive control. They generate disorientation and vulnerability. People who are braced for sudden mood swings must hang on the leader’s every word, looking for cues, awaiting instruction. Individual agency is lost, dependency is induced. It is something cult leaders do.”

My own view is that these observations about Mr Tumps’s behaviour are far too sophisticated where Mr Trump is concerned. Taking into account the excessive narcissism, I believe Mr Trump has not moved on from the mirror stage of development as defined by Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory:

“This recognition is as crucial developmental phase where infants, typically between 6 and 18 months, begin to recognise their own image in a mirror or similar reflective surface. This recognition is a misrecognition, forming a sense of self based on an idealised, unified image rather than the infant's actual fragmented and uncoordinated body. This identification with the mirror image marks the beginning of the "Imaginary Order" and lays the foundation for ego formation and the development of subjectivity.”

Mr Trump is still there, clutching that mirror, and for historical reasons, from the end of the 2nd World War, the myth of American wealth and power that hung over Europe remains, and people cannot understand they are looking at an American President stuck in the mirror stage. We have to grow up. Somehow that mirror has to be shattered.