This reading is interesting, if readily comprehended. Lacan's language, like many of his time, is a bit archaic and hard to decipher for a modern reader like myself, with all of its additional psychobabble that I additionally don't really understand. However, I feel like I can grasp at least a portion of Lacan's point in relation to the act of the "Mirror Stage". Reading this, I was reminded of the instinctual traits of infants that I've heard about--the main one being that a newborn is able to swim if put in water. I find that this Mirror Stage concept is relatable in that it is quite innate. Lacan states that "This event can take place...from the age of six months" when an infant has no real motor skills or self-motivation (1). The infant, when placed in front of a mirror, is quite taken aback by a revealed image of himself. By moving around and touching the mirror, the child is able to realize that it is in fact his image and that of the world surrounding him that is reflected. Lacan believes, if I am correct in this assumption, that this "identification" that occurs with the mirror, comes vastly before the Oedipus complex of Freud's theory begins (2). Additionally, Lacan believes that this "identification" is a false one, which results in a false reality which must be reconciled with as the child matures (2). Lacan goes on to mention the "Innenwelt" and the "Umwelt" or, innerworld and outerworld. It's about here where I get lost in the complexity of the language Lacan uses. He goes on to consider Freud's Oedipus complex, which he believes replaces the infant's "mirror stage" (5).
I'm pretty confused at the significance of this stage and its real realtion to the ego, id, and super ego. Any ideas?
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I was actually quite confused by this myself. All I got out of this was a possible distinction between two different stages of recognition in the infant... in one stage, perhaps there is a recognition of the image in the mirror as self in the physical sense (such as this is my arm, my leg, this is where I start and the world ends), and in Freud's complex, a child realizes that, he or she is, in fact, male or female and has certain expectations of the world and a deeper understanding of how it works in general.
ReplyDeleteAnd, then again, perhaps I am doing an entirely too surface-deep type of reading reading... I am not at all confident in theorists just yet.
Lacan states that "the function of the mirror stage...is to establish a relationship between an organism and its reality". With this in mind, if I were to put it in Freudian terms, I think that the mirror stage would be better described as an event that helps to differentiate the ego and the id in particular. The superego would seem to come into play later on down the line whenever the Oedipal drama starts to play out.
ReplyDeleteCory, I think you might be on to something when you say that the mirror stage is about the emergence of the ego.
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