{"id":7551,"date":"2011-04-16T20:08:37","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T01:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7551"},"modified":"2011-04-16T20:12:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T01:12:03","slug":"mirror-stage-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/04\/16\/mirror-stage-2\/","title":{"rendered":"mirror stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bailly, Lionel. Lacan: A Beginner\u2019s Guide<\/em>. Oxford: One World, 2009.<\/p>\n

… Lacan\u2019s subject … depends on the user accepting that there are elements of one\u2019s identity of which one is unconscious; anyone who thinks that one\u2019s identity is only what one wishes to say about oneself (\u2018I am Irish, I am an independent career woman<\/em>\u2019, etc.) is talking about what Lacan would have called the ego. Lacan\u2019s Subject is composed of and revealed by signifiers, which it utters without knowing what they mean.<\/p>\n

As developmental psychologies Henri Wallon pointed out, the human baby is very premature at birth compared with other animals, including the higher primates, from birth up until maybe eighteen or more months, the infant is unable to stand up, walk, or handle objects with dexterity, and the sense of \u2018self\u2019 and \u2018wholeness\u2019 that is allowed by mature proprioception (perception of the whole body within its environment) is absent.\u00a0 However, this human baby \u2013 immature, helpless, perceiving itself only in a fragmented way \u2013 is, at some point between the ages of six and eighteen months, going to see an image in the mirror, and realise that it is itself.<\/span>\u00a0 This will be the first time the baby discovers itself as a unitary being, and this discovery is the source of an intense feeling of joy and excitement, which is usually shared with the adult present; the infant, having made this discovery, turns back to look at it smother, for example, and shares with her its pride and surprise. This founding act, leading to the formation of the ego and the perception of the Subject, is attended by powerful emotion. 29<\/p>\n

Lacan said: \u2018we have to understand the mirror stage as an identification … the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image\u2019.\u00a0 The baby\u2019s discovery of self is an intellectual act; it involves the translation of an image into an idea \u2013 the idea of \u2018me\u2019 or \u2018self\u2019; hence, human identity is based on a primary act of intellect.\u00a0 But this is not a restatement of Descartes\u2019s cogito ergo sum<\/em>: I think, therefore I am. \u00a0Indeed, Lacan was completely opposed to \u2018any philosophy issuing directly from the cogito\u2019: for him, the opposite was true \u2013 I think, therefore I am not, <\/em>or I am fully a subject only when I am not thinking<\/em> \u2013 the very act of thinking about oneself nullifies the Subject.<\/span> 30<\/p>\n

While identifying itself in the mirror, the child also identifies with something from which it is separated: it is as an \u2018other\u2019 that the Subject identifies and experiences itself first<\/span>.\u00a0 The founding act of identity is therefore not just emotional and intellectual, it is also schismatic, separating the Subject from itself into an object. For Lacan, the Mirror Stage is \u2018the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, prior to it being objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject\u2019.\u00a0 At the Mirror Stage, the intellectual perception of oneself is an alienating experience and the beginning of a series of untruths; but it is a necessary alienation that allows the Subject access to the symbolic realm. 30<\/p>\n

M\u00e9connaissance<\/em> is a French word encompassing non-recognition of and obliviousness to something; it is sometimes translated as \u2018misrecognition\u2019 \u2013 a translation I find goes wide of the mark.\u00a0 \u2018Misrecognition\u2019 suggests that something has been recognised, only wrongly.\u00a0 In my preferred translation of obliviousness<\/em> or non-recognition<\/em>, the subject is completely blind to the object.\u00a0 One of Lacan\u2019s most important maxims is that human beings are very largely oblivious of their own Subject; the ego is what a person says of him\/herself; the Subject is the unrecognised self that is speaking.\u00a0 Psychoanalysis is about accompanying the patient towards his\/her subjective truth, or towards the point where the objective \u2018me\u2019 and the subjective \u2018I\u2019 can be united.<\/span>\u00a0 35<\/p>\n

As the child\u2019s language develops, it begins to attach ideas to the objectified self, which is to become the ego or \u2018le moi<\/em>\u2019: the ideas it attaches are often produced by a denial of reality, denegation, or wishful thinking.\u00a0 The three year old who cries, \u2018Race you, Daddy! I\u2019m winning!<\/em>\u2019 is showing his\/her desire to win, in the face of an easily observed reality \u2013 that Daddy\u2019s legs are four times longer and much faster.\u00a0 The father is likely, for his part, to let the child win \u2013 precisely because he wishes to help the development of the child\u2019s image of itself<\/em> as a winner, he is, in fact, aiding and abetting the fiction of his child\u2019s ego (in this case a necessary defence against the anxiety of being so small and helpless).\u00a0 And this fiction is maintained and nurtured throughout one\u2019s life; denegation too helps: \u2018I\u2019ve got no problem with so-and-so<\/em>\u2019 is almost always a contradiction of the truth; but it helps the speaker maintain his\/her fiction that she\/he is easygoing\/unaffected by the so-and-so in question.\u00a0 36<\/p>\n

The factitious, \u2018created\u2019 nature of the ego is behind Lacan\u2019s opposition to \u2018any philosophy directly issuing from the Cogitio\u2019<\/span>: the cogito<\/em> of Cartesian thinking relies mostly on the status of consciousness \u2013 the status in which the ego believes itself most to be in control.\u00a0 But for Lacan, the real \u2018I\u2019 is the Subject \u2013 I<\/em> in \u2018I am\u2019 \u2013 and this is necessarily hidden by conscious thought about itself.\u00a0 At the Mirror Stage, one may think of the Subject as the part that \u2018invents\u2019 the stories about its image-self or ego, affixing to it signifiers as it acquires language: girl, blonde, pretty, likes chocolate, hates pink, good at drawing, <\/em>etc.; but it also represses as many signifiers as it selects, and in doing so, tries to hide something of itself. Indeed, the Subject can only come into being when it is not thinking, because the very act of any thinking that involves its ego creates a smokescreen behind which it disappears.<\/span> 36<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bailly, Lionel. Lacan: A Beginner\u2019s Guide. Oxford: One World, 2009. … Lacan\u2019s subject … depends on the user accepting that there are elements of one\u2019s identity of which one is unconscious; anyone who thinks that one\u2019s identity is only what one wishes to say about oneself (\u2018I am Irish, I am an independent career woman\u2019, … Continue reading “mirror stage”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,24,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-lacan","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7551"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7557,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7551\/revisions\/7557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}