The Mirror Stage

"The child, at an early age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental inteliigence, can nevertheless recognize as such his own image in a mirror" (Lacan 441).


(my son Tyler in the mirror after a bath)

Ever since my son could focus his eyes on an object, he was able to identify himself. The mirror seemed like a magical place where the being on the other side of the glass was their best friend. At nine months he was waving to himself when we would pass any reflective object in the house. It was like seeing an old friend. There was excitement and joy across his face when he would pass by that beautiful baby in the mirror. At one year he began to walk, and give big, sloppy, open mouth kisses. It wasn't long before we found him laying a wet one on the bedroom mirror. "Give yourself a kiss," we would say, and with both hands on the glass, he would lean in for a kiss. At 17 months, each night when he was pulled from his bubble bath and wrapped in a towel, we would spend a few minutes reflecting in the bathroom mirror. He loved seeing his wet curls stuck to his head and his clumped up eye lashes. Now at 21 months, he doesn't even look twice at himself. Sometimes he gives a wave or a smile, but his new thing is watching videos of himself. He pulls the chair into the bedroom, points to the computer and says "Tyler! Tyler!" Where we then sit and watch home videos of him in the bathtub or in the yard playing. He gets so excited watching himself, and I always wonder what is going on in that sweet little head of his. He knows that little boy playing on the screen is him. How does he know that it's a video and not real life. How does he think he got into the computer? It never seems to matter to him. All that matters is how it makes him feel when he sees himself happy.

Jacques Lacan's phenomenon "The Mirror Stage," is not just a step in development. "it illistrates the conflictional nature of the dual relationship." This dual that Lacan implies, is one between the Ego and the body, the real vs. the imaginary. The baby, as early as six months, is able to recognize himself through his own uncontrollable body movements.

"This moment in which the mirror stage comes to an end inaugurates, by the identification wiht the imago of the counterpart and the drama of primoedial jealousy. The dialectic that will henceforth link the I to socially elaborated situations" (Lacan 444). Lacan's term meconnaissances (misrecognitions)means a false recognition of the baby's image.







Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 441-446. Print.