Mirror stage

The mirror stage is a term used by several Psychologue S. first was Henri Wallon, followed Rene Zazzo, Jacques Lacan and Francoise Dolto. These the last two authors introduce this stage into the psychoanalytical theory .

The mirror stage at Walloon Henri

Walloon Henri, creator of this term, was the first Psychologue to record the importance of the Miroir in the psychological construction industry of the Enfant, which it developed in his book the origins of the character in the child . For him, the child makes use of the Image exteriorized mirror, in order to unify his body. This process proceeds at the time of the emotional stage of Walloon (6 to 12 months). This author also described the behavior of the child vis-a-vis the reflected image, itself and his close entourage, in particular that of his mother.

Rene Zazzo will highlight the four great stages of this description:

Recognition of the image of the other ;
the child takes his image for another child : Thus, in its 61e week, touches, striking, licks its image in the mirror, plays with it as with a comparse ;
Malayan in front of its reflection : The child is diverted mirror of it obstinately. Even play the following week with a photograph under glass, whose small size makes quite improbable that it could really confuse it with the specular image ;
Identification of the child to his own image .

The mirror stage for Jacques Lacan

The parallel, on this point, between Jacques Lacan and Henri Wallon is so narrow, that certain authors go until saying that Lacan was “Freudo-Walloniste”. This report is surely a little excessive since Lacan is far from the design genetician of the Psychisme of Walloon, but it has the merit to be speaking, and to show at which Lacan point was based on the observations of Walloon.

The term “mirror stage” was thus re-used by Jacques Lacan in 1937 in: “ the mirror stage. Theory one moment structuring and genetic constitution of reality, conceived in relation to the experiment and the psychoanalytical doctrines , Communication with the 14th international psychoanalytical Congress, Marienbad, International Newspaper off Psychoanalysis, 1937. ”

It took it again first once in its article the complex, concrete factor of family psychology published in 1938, at the request of Henri Wallon in the French Encyclopédie , and more precisely in volume VIII heading the Mental Life , then in a Communication made in XVIe Congrès international of psychoanalysis, with Zurich, on July 17th, 1949: the mirror stage as formative of the function of I such as it is revealed to us in the psychoanalytical experiment.

Thus, for Lacan, this stage is the prone trainer of the function, the “I”, of the old Enfant from 6 to 18 months. But this function, can set up only by the presence of the Other. Indeed, why say “I”, if there is nobody with whom to oppose it? The subject is thus social, it needs the other to constitute itself.

Thus, according to Elisabeth Roudinesco, “the mirror stage is thus the moment or the state during which the child anticipates the control of his body unit by an identification with the image of similar and by the perception of its image in a mirror. ”

At a stage where the child already made, on the distressing mode, the experiment of the absence of his/her mother, the mirror stage would express the catch of Conscience reassuring body unit and, according to Lacan, the jubilation of the child to the Plaisir which it has to contemplate the image of his unit, at one moment when it does not control this unit yet physiologically. This lived of the body parcelling out, and the shift which causes this whole Image specular, allow the identification of the child his clean Image, identification which is only one imaginary anticipation alienating.

Mirror stage and Other

Later, Lacan developed an important aspect of the mirror stage, by introducing a reflection there on the role of the Other. In the archetypic experiment of the mirror stage, the child is not alone in front of the mirror, it is carried by one of his relative S which indicates to him, as well physically as verbally, his clean Image. It would be in the Regard and it to say EC other, very as much as in its own image, that the child would check his unit. Or, to say it differently, the proof of its unit comes to him from the glance and saying of another (parental). Indeed, the child in front of the mirror recognizes first of all the other, the adult at his sides, which says to him “Looks at it is you! ”, and thus the child includes/understands “It is me”.

The Regard thus will be a fundamental concept for Lacan since it is him which will make it possible this identification similar to evolve/move. Without going into the details of the work of H. Bouasse, optical and photometry known as geometrical included in Remarks on the report/ratio of Daniel Lagache (more known under the name of the experiment of the “reversed bouquet”), one can summarize the problem of the glance at Lacan around a report:

the image of my body passes by that imagined in the glance of the other; what makes glance a capital concept for all that touches so that I have moreover expensive in me and thus moreover Narcissique.

This period is also the installation of the source object of desire of the child. It will choose it while referring to the object of desire of the other.

Mirror stage and Ego ideal

Mirror stage and image of the body

The mirror stage implies that the body is worth like meaning. A term is pointed to indicate this body and this last will be taken in the chain of meaning, chain in which will be able to intercalate a Symptôme.

The question of the articulation of and the image mirror stage of the body arises with the now well-known and scientifically reproduced observation existence of the mirror stage in the higher primates (shown in chimpanzee (side troglodytes and side paniscus) and gorilla). Several experiments prove it: simplest was the fact of painting of a color the ear of a deadened chimpanzee which, with its alarm clock, looking itself in a mirror, touches the ear then, thus confirming its recognition in the mirror. It is however difficult of inférer of this observation the existence of one me comparable with this entity at the human one, insofar as we do not communicate with the primates and that the existence of ego cannot be marked by the subject (is it a subject besides?). A solution appeared possible to us by postulating the existence of a conscience of a " me corporel" in the great primates, in the absence of the existence of ego, which is however not an impossibility (with the direction where hear we it). It would be then our definition of human which would be to re-examine.

The difference Francoise Dolto

The difference of Dolto can be declined in three points.

The type of surface of the mirror

Whereas for Lacan the mirror is a reflective plane surface, for Dolto it is a psychic surface omniréfléchissante. I.e. the mirror it is not that the scopic image, but can just as easily be the voice or any other significant form.

The pre-specular type of image

Whereas Lacan sees there a parcelled out image of the body of the Enfant, Dolto speaks about cohesion of the body around the olfactive and visceral references, that it calls paramount Narcissisme. For Dolto, the pre-specular subject exists as of the design, as it develops it in its concept of unconscious image of the body (ICC). Therefore for it, certainly the mirror stage is one structuring symbolic system, reality and imaginary, but it is especially the final inscription of the subject in its biological body, an end, and not a beginning.

Emotional reaction of the child vis-a-vis his image

For Lacan the Child jubilee, whereas Dolto affirms that the child suffers from this Castration symboligene, passing from the unconscious image of the body, with the constraint of this one with the considered Image.

The difference at Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein is also dissociated from Lacan on several points:

The glance of the other to recognize itself

I need the other to recognize me, because it is all the relation which the other has with itself which will make it possible the image of my body to be expressed or not; it is in the sense that the child can advance with enthusiasm towards the other and following a reflection mocker of this other, to be disappointed; consequently not to more want to show itself under the same day with the other.

To be or want to be

The other or the subject is seen in me, in what it is not and wishes being, it is all the process of the desire which is concerned. But if it wishes being what it is not, it is because it is not it precisely that it wishes it. He thus does not want the being, not more than it wishes that the other is it really. From where the enigmatic direction of the sentence of Lacan in its response to Mr. Safouan in his seminar on the four fundamental concepts of the psychoanalysis, at the end of chapter 8: “The subject arises as other which it is not and what one gives him to see is not what it wants to see. ”

Where I see it…

Where I see the subject it is in a glance imagined by me. If for example I show on the subject something that I should not show him because I am unaware of that will run up against its morals, then the subject in question will be put in anger. What the subject will have seen, it is what I would have shown him, but it will not be able to see its own anger as I see it, although it felt all its anger afterwards in him. Its anger is that which I imagine in his glance.

This anger, I could for example see it in a dream, in the shape of his body to back, that is to say the reversed image of his body. According to the expression “anger turned over it”.

… it is also where I see myself

However me what I show with the other, it is what I wish to show of me but that I cannot express yet differently than by it showing with this other myself that is the different one: this similar that I see for the circumstance in anger and in the form of one body to back is not other than the image of my own body to back, projected on him and imagined by me.

But still

Finally, which the other wants to see in me, depends on what it accepts or refuses with all the intermediate grades that comprises and of its capacity to assume it, to see like another itself, in me. If the subject does not want to see what I give him to see, it is precisely that it represents other which it is not and its way of representing itself has to largely see with its Surmoi.

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