You have probably seen that your babies ignored their own image in the mirror, until a certain age. They simply did not know what they were. The mirror stage designates a phase of the child's psychological development between approximately six and eighteen months of age and indicating an improvement in that phase of non-recognition.
The mirror stage is a concept of the theory of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan that refers to that stage in which the child is for the first time trained to perceive himself, to perceive your full body image in the mirror. In this phase, according to Lacanian theory, the ego would develop as a psychic instance:
The breeding of man, at an age in which he is for a short time, but still a time, surpassed in instrumental intelligence by the chimpanzee, nevertheless recognizes his image in the mirror as such.
It is a universal phenomenon that could be verified in all human beings (under certain conditions that we will see later) and that constitutes a milestone in the creation of the “I” and the subject.
A baby who still does not walk (the matrix uncoordination and the "defragmented body" are linked in Lacan's theory) can approach a mirror looking for what the author calls "a snapshot of himself."
Although the phenomenon was studied previously, it is Lacan who, around 1935-36 points to the implications of the mirror stage for the formation of the self. This stage of development is described in his essay "The stage of the mirror as a formator of the function of the self."
The boy recognizes himself in the mirror
Children before reaching this stage usually react with fear or curiosity before the mirror, or just ignore it. But when a child first recognizes himself in the mirror, he celebrates the appearance of his image with a gesture of joy, jubilation or ecstasy.
This fascination is interpreted by Lacan as the identification of the child with his image, which he finds there for the first time fully reflected. Instead of seeing only parts of your body, observe the whole for the first time.
What the child has seen before is his hands, his legs, his belly ... But until he recognizes himself in the mirror, the child has never seen his face, for example, or his entire body.
The discovery he makes in the mirror stage is that these fragments of the body that did not appear structured or related to each other, did not constitute a unit, now, with the experience of the mirror, they are already part of a whole, their "I".
The one that the child looks at and recognizes, that which imitates him so well, and that sooner or later he will discover that he is himself, or his image, to speak properly, that does not uncoordinate, does not have a fragmented body: hence the child's content derives .
But Lacan observes that the great joy that the child experiences when recognizing himself in the mirror is ephemeral. It is recognized and unknown almost at the same time, because what he recognizes is not him, but just an image of him. A separate image, which does not belong to him.
That is why the mirror stage implies an experience of division or excision of the subject. This is one reason why Lacan later distinguishes between two forms of the self: "je" and "moi", although they are not clarified until a later stage of his work.
In essence, as read, I think it would be that image we have of ourselves, the one we consider true, and the apparent image that others have of us, which could be more or less close to the reality that we perceive. And which one is the real one? We would enter to philosophize ...
A study on the stage of the mirror explains this duality that occurs after the discovery of himself in the mirror:
That first identification is in itself deeply alienating: to begin with, the child recognizes himself in what is undoubtedly not himself and another; secondly, that other, even if he was himself, is affected by specular symmetry, a condition that will then be reproduced in dreams; Third, he who recognizes himself as I is not affected by my limitations, he does not have the problems I have to move.
What does it take for the mirror stage to occur?
Apart from philosophical-psychological complications, at least two processes must converge for the mirror stage to occur:
- Enough maturation of brain areas specialized in the perception and processing of visual information. Although it was thought that the stadium was exclusive to humans, lately it has been seen that this fact also occurs in other animal species.
- That there is a similar one that serves as a stimulus (that is, if a child grows up, let's say, without human company, next to a mirror, I would not know that what is reflected is him).
The like is the "Other", it is in principle the mother (or who fulfills the maternal function), which is the visual model (the baby does see the image of her complete) with which the child will be identified, but also the mother will be a configurator of the body image by "modeling" the baby with her caresses and with her verbal expressions (you are like that, where I caress you, and how I tell you that you are).
According to this theory, when the mirror stage occurs, the infant would stop distressing so much in the absence of the mother, becoming able to rejoice by perceiving reflected, and, above all, endowed with body unity, of a body of his own (which he will identify with “ yours).
The father (or the couple, or a third person) also has its importance at this stage according to Lacan: it is the paternal function that will allow maintaining the notion of the subject's bodily unity and then the psychic development that becomes from this first perception of unity.
And if there is no mirror to look at?
You will have observed that among the conditions for the mirror stage to occur, I have not precisely put a mirror. We can imagine that in places where mirrors are not used or centuries ago, children, in some way, also reached this stage of their development, their "self-recognition." Blind people do it too.
The identification we describe can also occur with another, for example with the mother; on the other hand, this psychoanalytic theory, which serves as a support to understand the structure of the self and the identification with peers, not a historical fact through which every human being has to go.
Definitely, the stadium of the mirror, that first identification of the baby before the mirror It is key to the formation of the self, it is literally original and founder of the series of identifications that will follow and will constitute the self of the human being, with the company of their peers.
