Study Resource-4, Continental Philosophy

Continental Philosophy
Study Resource-4

THE MIRROR STAGE AS FORMATIVE OF THE I FUNCTION (AS REVEALED IN PSYCHOANALYTIC EXPERIENCE)
By Lacan
An Overview 1
Elaboration of the Paper 1
Importance of the concept of I 1
Evolutionary placement of human psychic development 1
What is the mirror stage? 2
Ideal-I as a Gestalt 2
Conflict of the imago with the reality 2
Mirror stage model as primal model for relationship to self and the other 2
Primary and secondary identifications of the mirror image 2
End of mirror stage 3
What is the role of Psychoanalytic method? 3
Contribution of Lacan 3
Criticism of Existentialism 3

An Overview
The mirror stage is early component in Lacan's reinterpretation of Freud's work. Mirror stage is the developmental stage where infants between the ages of 6 to 18 months begin to recognize themselves in the mirror as a whole entity instead of fragmented movements and undefined boundaries between self and other (especially, baby and mother) that constituted her world till then. The infant identifies with the image which serves as a gestalt (meaning- pattern or figure) of the infant's emerging perceptions of selfhood. This shows the desire of the infant to see her-self as an 'I'. Since this image emerges at a time when the child does not have control over her body yet, the image of 'I' is a 'mirage' of control and 'perfect self' or imago. This imago presents to the man 'an organic insufficiency in his natural reality'- this creates a permanent sense of being imperfect with anticipation/looking forward to of perfection. The imago establishes the ideal-I towards which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his life.
According to Lacan, the mirror stage establishes the ego as being fundamentally dependent upon external objects, on an other. As the 'individual' matures and enters into social relations through language, this 'other' will be manifested through a series of social and linguistic frameworks each of which will give subject's personality its particular characteristics.
The maturation of mirror stage into misrecognition of self in societal context: The mirror stage "is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation." It gives birth to fantasies of both fragmentary body and an alienating identity. With the ending of the mirror stage, the 'I' must become social where we find ourselves at odd with ourselves. Instinct and desires are recognized to be things that could destroy the ideal-I. The ability to recognize oneself arises in difference: in an interaction with the other, we reflect an image of ourselves; this image has an effect on us and this decides our capacity to assert ourselves in the interaction. Thus, with maturation arises misrecognition of ourselves. This difference creates the 'I'.
'Lack' as a psychoanalytic concept: Lacan considers lack to be central to the human psyche. In the mirror stage, the lack constitutes of the experience of the gap between the perfect image reflected in the mirror and the fragmentary life experienced in reality. Thus, the infant first recognizes itself as lacking.
Lacan also creates a model for desire. Desire is embedded in the psyche and is by nature not fulfillable. This is described in terms of infant feeding: the infant during breastfeeding/bottlefeeding experiences primal completeness when she receives both love and food at the same time. The baby cries to demand more love and food. With the occurrence of weaning, the child has to separate the united act of receiving love and food represented in breastfeeding/bottlefeeding into separate/fragmentary activities. This imposed gap creates the space for desire: in asking for both together, the child only gets one of them- either love or food. This desire determines the rest of our lives- moving us towards the ideal man, ideal woman, ideal child, ideal job and a series of other idealities.
Lacan's idea about the formation of 'I' developed over time in conjunction with his other elaborations on Freud's theory. He presented a paper on mirror stage on 3rd August 1936 at a conference of the International Psychoanalytic Association in Marienbad (to which Lacan refers in the first sentence of his essay). 13 years later, on July 17, 1949, at a conference of the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Zurich, Lacan delivered another version of the mirror stage paper which reappeared in print later.
Elaboration of the Paper
Importance of the concept of I
The concept of 'I' is important for psychoanalysis because it accounts for characteristics of the central focus of psychoanalytic practice: the 'I' which presents itself to the analyst and also the 'I' of the analyst. In Freud's model (which is the point of departure for Lacan), the 'ego' is not fully self-aware or in control of itself. The ego is determined through the desires and fears that arise in the id and the imperatives posited by the superego. Lacan's concept of mirror stage dramatizes how the ego itself becomes divided.
The human mind is not a unified whole which is governed by reason (here, the reference to it is made through Descartes' 'Cogito'). Any self-knowledge is an illusion to an extent. Apart from criticizing Descartes' position, he also refutes the ego-psychology which aims at developing a strong ego which could compel the subject to stand in line with the social conventions.
The mirror stage is not only a transient stage of human psychological development but is a model for relationship between the 'I' and its image of itself. This point is emphasized in his seminar of 1954.
Evolutionary placement of human psychic development
Around the age of 6months, human infant overrides the capacity of a chimpanzee through instrumental intelligence, characterized by the recognition of one's own image in the mirror. Kohler talks of this as 'situational apperception' which is an essential moment in the act of intelligence.
In the case of monkey, the image is considered useless and discarded. However, the human infant responds to this image through a stream of gestures where he playfully experiences the relationship: (1) between the movements made in the image and those of the reflected environment; (2) between the virtual complex of the mirror and the reality that it duplicates (child's body along with the other objects around him).
Even though the child has still not managed to talk or even stand, even before the time the child can express verbally the thought "that's me" (her sense of being situated in the world- in Heidegger's terms, her sense of 'being a being'), she possesses the capacity to position herself in the slightly leaning-forward position where she can get an instantaneous view of the image to fix in her mind. This physical straining goes on to become symbolic of the psychological strain later in life. An actual mirror is not necessarily the only source of such an image- other experiences- like the attention of the mother to the child- can lead to uprising of the image of the self as a separate entity.
This act of fixation of the image, for Lacan, posits the meaning of libidinal dynamism and the ontological structure of the human world. The cut-off point for the mirror stage is 18 months when children begin to get hold of language and form social bonds with others. The dynamic relationship between the subject and his image remains a perpetual force in the subject's psychic life. It is a libidinal relationship- the psyche invests libido in the image of itself. This is in line with Freud's ideas in "On Narcissism: An Introduction". Having an image of oneself is part of human reality- Lacan has called this 'ontological structure of the human world'. We are always 'someone else' to the extent that the image is perceived as being separate from us.
What is the mirror stage?
In this context, the mirror stage is an identification where the subject assumes an image and consequently transforms through such an assuming. The mirror stage model is a process in which the infant does not simply identify with what he sees in the mirror with his experience of his own existence but is transformed by the vision of his image, which he appropriates both as a representation of himself and as a goal towards which he strives. Here, Lacan makes reference to the concept of imago present in Christian theology. According to the Genesis, human beings are created in the image of God, in the imago Dei. Augustine, for instance, also suggests that humans must strive to restore the divine image in themselves. Lacan's mirror stage can be understood as an ironic version of this theology: to be human is to be the creation of one's own image.
Ideal-I as a Gestalt
The Ideal-I is given to the subject only as a gestalt- as a different way of looking at himself- not as a reality but as an exteriority. The ideal-I is external to the subject such that it posits before him the anticipated maturation of his power in a illusion (of identification with the ideal-I). The ideal-I is essential to his maturation in this sense as it marks his vision of the future- but is not constituted in the present reality. The ideal-I appears always as the line that never meets the curve of his reality (a frozen contour). The mirror image is given in a proportion/uniformity of unity and wholeness which is a reverse of the experiential reality of the child which is fragmentary, even though it approximates the physical makeup of the body. Though it is not yet possible to find out/recognize the physical (motor style) counterpart to it right now, the ideal-I is a primal model of the self-experientiality of the entire human species. It is a permanently recurring model (the subject always has an ideal-I) which predicts the alienating destination (destination of ideal-ity which is an alienation from the reality). Why is the ideal-I an alienating destination? Because it is a constant reminder of the insufficiency of the reality and due to the incapacity to ever actualize this ideal-I, it is an alienating destination. The ideal-I stands for the potentialities which the subject can never actualize fully. She can only approximate them continually (meaninglessness of the pursuit- Ref. myth of Sisyphus). The ideal- I is the statue which is the accumulation of the subject's projections and "phantoms". This statue (called 'statue' owing to its solid and composed stature- with fullness and uniformity) dominates the lived reality of the subject. This relation between the ideal-I (the world of his own making) and the subject remains eternally ambiguous due to the lack of concreteness (every action is only an approximation and not an actualization of the potentiality reflected in the ideal-I) and un-unitable. This reflects the eternal anxieties and dissatisfaction which the subject must experience.

Conflict of the imago with the reality
Up to the age of a year or so, the child is organically insufficient such that he experiences his body as fragmentary and incomplete due to dependency on the mother, nursing and Other for her needs. The image in the mirror is, on the other hand, an image of a whole body- a united, composed and singular entity. This encounter of child with the mirror image which does not match up to his experienced reality characterizes the 'exemplary function' of the mirror stage- of the mirror stage standing as the foundational example that determines the relation of the self to itself in the years to come. Throughout our lives, the mirrored image does not correspond to the experienced reality which is physically, emotionally and historically situated.
Mirror stage model as primal model for relationship to self and the other
The mirror stage model is primordial symbolic model in which the I originates and develops. Following the mirror stage, the child takes on the role of an object in the dialectic with the other (an object- a passive thing which is the content of conscious observation) through which he will go on to form a complex self-image based on relationships with other people and develops his function as a subject (a subject- conscious agent who observes the object) with acquisition of language through which he will gain the capacity to name himself and to designate himself with the pronoun 'I'.
The ideal-I becomes the threshold of the visible world such that the subject's reality is conditioned through this imago. The mind needs this image to organize its visible world. The subject must have the capacity to visualize herself in relationship to the objects around her. This is evident especially by taking into account the dispositions of the mirror image/imago of one's own body which are projected onto one's hallucinations and dreams. These projections could include one's individual features or even infirmities or object-projections.
Even though biology would not adopt the psycho-dynamic principles on which Lacan is basing his arguments, he puts forward instances from biology to support his claim about the internalization of the image of the self:
Female pigeons only reach sexual maturity when they are in the presence of other members of their species. A female pigeon in isolation can mature if she sees her own reflection in a mirror;
A type of locust moves from solitary to gregarious form at a certain development phase only when it has access to the similar movements made by other members of its species.
These observations from biology can be linked to aesthetics. Homeomorphic identification refers to the tendency of certain animals to respond to those visual forms which resemble them. The notion of beauty is also shaped partially by the notions of symmetry which is based on the dimensions of human body. Both homeomorphic identification and notion of beauty are instantiations of the internalization of the image of the self.
The mirror stage is the model of relationship between Innenwelt and Umwelt. Innenwelt refers to the 'inner world' in Lacan's terminology. This inner world often expresses itself in dreams through images of fortresses and other enclosed/protected spaces. The ideal-I imago forms the imaginary boundaries while the fragmented body stands as an eternal threat to this image which is identified as the I. Unwelt refers to the environment or surroundings of the subject. The relationship between the innenwelt and umwelt is dialectical such that in the mirror stage, the I arises through the establishment of the relationship between ideal-I (the imago of perfect unity) and the subject (experienced reality of fragmentation). The ideal-I and the subject are not two different realities but the ideal-I which conditions the experienced reality of the subject such that it determines its thoughts and actions in the face of the fragmentary nature of the latter. This subject which is in perpetual instability forms the innenwelt and is in relation to its environment.
Prematurity and the mirror image: The relationship of the subject to his environment is determined and based on the model of 'primordial Discord' between the imago and the experienced reality of organic insufficiency (malaise and motor uncoordination) during the months after birth. This organic insufficiency is characteristic of humankind since many animals are, soon after birth, able to utilize their capacities for survival. Human beings are born premature. The time span of physical insufficiency (months prior to becoming physically independent) is accompanied by the psychical process of shaping the model for relating to oneself and the Other. The phrase 'dehiscence at the heart of organism' refers to the foundational fragmentary and uncoordinated nature of the subject. The psychical development we undergo during the neonatal months does not eliminate the initial helplessness with which we enter the world but only gives us ways to deal with it.
Primary and secondary identifications of the mirror image
The mirror image takes on form of the 'ideal-I'. It becomes the primal category (rootstock) under which other secondary identifications are subsumed. The primary identification occurs with the image itself while the secondary identifications are the libidinal investments in other people, things and ideas. The secondary identifications include the libidinal normalization functions. Libidinal normalization refers to the process by which the destructive libido finds another path, a way into representing itself where it can develop beyond its initial narcissistic investment, finding a way to the object. (This is the task of secondary identification).
Lacan emphasizes that the primary identification with the mirror image is fictional- that is, the ideal-I will never completely overlap with the subject's experienced reality. The significance of the mirror image is contained in the insight that before the child is involved in social relations that would determine him, the agency known as ego is already situated in this relation with the mirror image. This mirror image is irreducible and only approaches the subject's becoming asymptotically, that is, only to approximations and never overlapping completely. The model of asymptotic line is a geometrical one. This asymptotic line nears the curve but never intersects with it.
This implies that there is perpetually a gap between the experienced reality and the ideal-I of the subject, no matter how many dialectic syntheses the subject undergoes to resolve the dissonance with his reality.










end of mirror stage
The mirror stage comes to an end with the entrance of the child into the social setup where the social 'I' is formed. However, the mirror stage only ends as a stage in psychic development. It continues to be a structural element of psychic life: the initial relation between the infant and her ideal-I becomes the base for child's social relationships and for the child's self-image as a social being.
The first step in this entrance into the social setup is the identification of the self with the mirror image (imago) of those who resemble the self and the "drama of primordial jealousy". The primal models of relationship with the Other will determine the movement of the individual in the society thereon.
An instance of the identification of the child with the imago of the other semblables (equivalents) is visible through the phenomenon of transitivism in children, noted by Charlotte Buhler: young children may cry in pain when they see another child cry. Even though this initial identification is not carried into older children, they continue to be dependent on others for stability and coherence.
An instance of primordial jealousy is recordable in early instances of sibling rivalry- which indicates the child's experience of selfhood as being bound with the presence of the others.
This moment of shift from the specular 'I' to the social 'I' where the other is recognized as constituting desires, one's own objects are considered as being positioned in a competition with other people determines 'who we are'. Here, the 'I' is witnessed as becoming "an apparatus to which every instinctual pressure constitutes a danger": I recognize every instinct that arises as a danger as it involves my interaction with the other for its realization which could be met with blatant rejection or ultimate non-fulfillment. For instance, sexuality and its identification with sin in Christianity. The relationship of the individual with the Other is normalized/stabilized through cultural intervention such that the model of relation the child establishes with the Other during the formative years determines her/his adult choices. For instance, the choice of one's sexual object is dependent on the primal Oedipus complex.
The individual faces negativity at two levels: the realization of the never-ending distance between the I and ideal-I and the recognition of the Other as a source of one's own identity (which could threaten or further one's desires). This negativity alludes to the notion of alienation (primarily, from oneself and secondarily, from the Other) and the fundamental meaninglessness of existence (all meanings as created meanings) in existentialism.
what is the role of Psychoanalytic method?
Psychoanalytic therapy is aimed at bringing me face to face with the desires and aggressions that are born due to the split in my ego. In analysis, I confront the fundamental lack of being and the ceaseless desire which is put to a stop by death. The psychoanalytic session is to bring the patient to a point where she/he realizes that to be human is to be subject to desire that cannot be fulfilled. The major highlight of Lacan's theory is that the does not ask of us to accommodate ourselves to this disappointment but to find a way to be less disabled by the dialectic of desire that models my being.
When the psychoanalytic sessions reach a stage where there is 'aggressive disintegration of the individual', that is exposing of the gap between the experienced reality of the subject and image of ideal-I upheld, the fragmentary body begins to manifest itself continually in dreams in form of disconnected limbs or of superficial representation of the organs or of growing wings and of taking up arms to persecute oneself. These forms were often used by Hieronymus Bosch who used it to show the ascent of man from 15th century to modernity. The fragmented body turns out to be organically insufficient even in fantasies which is essentially marked by 'fragilization'- the process of bringing out the fragility of the body in the fantasies of those suffering from hysteria. This fragility is manifested through spasmodic and schizoid symptoms like involuntary movement of one or more muscles of the voice box (making of sounds suddenly without one's control).
contribution of lacan
Lacan hopes that his theory will be used to determine the possibilities of what could have 'gone wrong' while formation of the 'I' in his patients, resulting in mental illness. Mental illnesses are outcomes of the same psychic structure which also produces 'normal' mental states. With reference to Freud's daughter Anna's work, this paragraph talks about how certain disorders like paranoia, hysteria and obsessional neurosis can be linked to particular stages within the formation of 'I'. A critical juncture- from the shift out of mirror stage (Oedipal complex) into the social-I- the transition of the 'specular I' to the 'social I'-can be locus of such an event of 'going wrong'. In the social-I, the initial identification of the infant with her Ideal-I is also conditioned now by the cultural norms, social conventions and expectations.
Criticism of existentialism
Lacan criticizes existentialism and says that even though it grasps the meaninglessness of existence and the I as source of its meanings, it presumes a consciousness which is self-aware and has capacity for self-sufficiency. This results in an illusion of autonomy of the self which is held as being a solution/remedy for rectifying ego's constitutive misrecognitions. Lacan questions this notion of autonomy itself and challenges the possibility of diffusion of the foundational misrecognition of the self with the ideal-I. This line of thought has led to the emergence of existential psychoanalysis.
Even though existentialism and psychoanalysis share their fatalistic view of what it means to be a human, both don't recognize anything like a transcendent soul, both focus on the morality and materiality of human existence, Lacan criticizes existentialism for promoting a naïve conviction that it is possible for humans to achieve a direct and conscious knowledge of their situation. According to Lacan, the starting point of any examination is conditioned already by the function of misrecognition which is the essential structural element of our 'I'. Referring to Anna Freud's work on ego, Lacan says that the operation of negation or denial is essential to the misrecognitions which condition our experience of the world. I am an animal subjected to death and violent sexual drives. However, I deny this facet of my reality so that I can function as a 'normal' human being but the reality of my aggression, mortality and sexuality doesn't go away. These truths about my natural form- the id- posit constant pressure on my consciousness and erupt in dreams, psychotic episodes and neuroses.



21-April-2015


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The terms 'ego', 'self' and 'individual' are interchangeably used to designate the 'I' that arises in contrast to the ideal-I which it can never realize.