The theory of the 'mirror stage' was one of Lacan's major early original contributions to psychoanalysis. While less prominent in his later thinking it continued to provide a reference point for his thinking concerning the organization of the register of 'the imagi-nary'. The theory was developed during the 1930s and his most central paper on the subject, 'The mirror stage as formative of the function of I as revealed in psychoanalysis' (1949) has been available, in English, as one of the collection of papers in Écrits since 1977.
Subsequent discussions of the mirror phase are to be found, in translation, in 'Some reflections on the ego' (1953 [1951]), 'The neurotic's individual myth' (1979 [1953]), The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II (1988 [1954-55]) and in 'On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis' (1977 [1959]).
Among untranslated or unpublished works in which are to be found major statements concerning the 'mirror stage' are his contri-bution to the Encyclopédie Française titled 'La famille' (1938), which is essential reading for the person who wishes to appreciate the context in which the theory was developed, and 'The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book V, Formations of the Unconscious' (unpublished).
In his 1949 account of the mirror stage Lacan took as his refer-ence points both child and ethnological observations to describe a stage in human development which had links with more archaic forms of behavioural transmission, such as imprinting, but which in the human had a most distinctive characteristic which allowed it to become the prototype for the ego.
It is evident that what he had in mind here is not the Freudian ego as he used the term je (I) rather than moi which is the French rendering of Freud's ich. Later he abandoned the distinction and referred to the moi, which suggests that he believed that his theory of the ego and its links to the mirror stage should replace the Freudian ego.
He proposed that during a certain period of development (six to eighteen months usually), the child exhibits a fascination with and delight in his/her image as reflected either in the mirror or in
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his/her perception of another child of similar age who acts as a reflection of his/her own body or a double.
In his later references to the minor stage he adopted a less empirically developmental perspective using it rather as a metaphor to describe aspects of, in particular, the mother-child relation, a polar relation constructed around a specular fascination.
Lacan suggested that the power of this image derives from its quality as a Gestalt, an integrated form; a perception which stands in such contrast to what has up until then been experienced co-aesthenically, as a fragmented body. The integration is an illusion, but a captivating one which promises much and provides, according to Lacan, the prototype for the ego.
He argued that the fascination of the infant with the visual Gestalt is not a definitively human phenomenon, but one which can be observed in a range of animals in which a visual signal provides a necessary impetus for development.
He referred to the instance of the female pigeon whose gonad will develop only following the sight of another pigeon. However, what is most distinctive in the human is his/her 'specific prematu-rity of birth', by which the development of mental functioning precedes in some respects the development of physical functioning.
What the infant experiences, according to Lacan, when he/she catches sight of /herself in the mirror or recognizes him-/herself in the other is an image of perfection and completeness at marked variance from the impression which his/her other senses have provided. At the same time it is a glimpse of the future, of what he/she will become or at least imagines he/she will become.
From this point the duality of the ego becomes established in his/her psyche, as represented in the ideal form of the specular other, the mirror image or what Lacan termed the 'ideal ego' on the one hand and on the other hand the fragmented body which gazes upon the 'ideal ego' and which Lacan designates as the 'ego'.
Although the 1949 article remains the central reference point for the English language reader, his 1938 Encyclopédie Française entry 'La famille' which appeared just two years after he had first intro-duced the theory of the mirror stage at the Fourteenth International Psychoanalytic Congress provided an elaboration of the full theoretical context within which the mirror stage theory is located.
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This article contained a pungent critique of certain strands of Freudian theory. Whereas Freud had, by the latter stage of the development of his metapsychology, either manifestly or implicitly spliced together the biological and the cultural factors in psychical organization, Lacan emphasized their independence. At the core of his argument, he insisted on the structural distinction between 'instinct' and 'complex', the former being a biological structure and the latter a cultural structure which is specific to the human.
Lacan suggested that the complex has an 'organizing' function in psychical development and defined the 'imago' as the uncon-scious part of the complex. He proposed three broad complexes corresponding to stages of psychical and physical development:
complexes of weaning; complexes of intrusion; and the Oedipus complex. Freud and Lacan share a common biological starting point for their conception of psychical development. This is the general observation that the human is notable for the 'specific prematurity of birth'. The baby is both physically and psychologi-cally immature and remains so for many years.
Whereas Freud placed the emphasis on sexual immaturity and the effects of changes in the location of the organization of eroto-genic experience, Lacan placed the emphasis on the effects of discrepancies in the progress of psychical and physical maturation.
Lacan's argument was that the infant was able to apprehend the integration and maturation of his or her body at the level of image prior to its achievement at the level of lived experience. The conse-quence was a division within the psyche between a registration at the level of lived experience of the body as immature and frag-mented, and a registration at the level of the imaginary of the body as mature and integrated. This division, which was manifest in but not confined to the mirror stage, is, according to Lacan, central to the formation of the various infantile complexes associated with weaning, rivalry, sexual orientation to the parent, and castration.
These complexes were, according to Lacan, best understood as cultural solutions to the social problems engendered by the specific prematurity of birth, solutions which in other species are instinc-tual or pre-established. The tension between the biological and the cultural would later be organized by Lacan into psychical registers which he terms 'imaginary' and 'symbolic', the term imaginary
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giving recognition to the powerful psychical effects of the unifying operation of visual perception and its product, the image.
Twenty years later, in his unpublished Seminar of 1957-58 ('Formations of the unconscious'), Lacan employed the theory of the 'mirror stage' in a discussion of that most elusive of psychical phenomena, comedy. He distinguished the comic from the joke or witticism which Freud had effectively analysed in his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). The effect of the latter turned on its capacity to open up the field of the unconscious through the operation of linguistic devices and to thereby release and structure quanta of pleasure hitherto barred. Comedy on the other hand was not so intimately linked to the operation of language. Lacan pointed out that the sight of a beheaded duck walking around may be quite comic. Similarly the Chaplinesque antics and poses which form the basis of the repertoire of a certain field of comedy have their effect quite independently of language.
It is, according to Lacan, precisely the tension between the degraded figure of fun and the elevated triumphant figure that we hold in our mind as the image of contrast, which provides the origin of laughter in this form of comedy. This tension is the funda-mental tension of the ego, structured in accordance with the mirror stage, and released in laughter. Just as the joke permits through its structuration, the realization of pleasure that previously is consciously experienced only as anxiety, comedy of the slapstick kind organizes in a fashion which enables pleasure, the aggressivity aroused by the presence of the image of the specular other.
See also: aggressivity, ideal ego, imaginary, symbolic Other terms: instinct, complex, ego, image, structure.
References
Freud, S. (1960) [1905] 'Jokes and their relation to the unconscious', S.E. 8. London: Hogarth.
Lacan, J. (1938) 'La famille'. In De Monzie (éd.) Encyclopédie Française, vol. 8. Paris: Monzie.
Lacan, J. (1977) [1949] The minor stage as formative of the function of the P, Écrits: A Selection (trans. A. Sheridan). London:
Tavistock.
118 A Compendium of Lacanian Terms
Lacan, J. (1977) [1958] 'On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis', Écrits: A Selection (trans. A. Sheridan).
London: Tavistock.
Lacan, J. (1953) 'Some reflections on the ego', International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34: 11-17.
Lacan, J. (1979) [1953] 'The neurotic's individual myth', Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 48: 405-25.
Lacan, J. (1988) [1954-55] 'The ego in Freud's theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis', Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II, (trans. S. Tomaselli). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lacan, J. [1957-58] Seminar Book V: 'Formations of the uncon-scious' (trans. C. Gallagher). Unpublished.
Robert King