Abstract
This article brings out certain philosophical difficulties in Lacan’s account of the mirror stage, the initial moment of the subject’s development. For Lacan, the “original organization of the forms of the ego” is “precipitated” in an infant’s self-recognition in a mirror image; this event is explicitly prior to any social interactions. A Hegelian objection to the Lacanian account argues that social interaction and recognition of others by infants are necessary prerequisites for infants’ capacity to recognize themselves in a mirror image. Thus mutual recognition with another, rather than self-recognition in a mirror, is what makes possible subsequent ego-formation and self-consciousness. This intersubjective critique suggests that many of the psychoanalytic consequences that Lacan derives from the mirror stage (e.g., alienation, narcissism, and aggressivity) may need to be rethought.
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Notes
This consequence is stated very forcefully in the “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’”:
the displacement of the signifier determines the subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in their refusals, in their blindness, in their end and in their fate,… willingly or not, everything that might be considered the stuff of psychology, kit and caboodle, will follow the path of the signifier. (Lacan 1988, pp. 43–44)
For convenience, Lacan’s works shall be cited henceforth in the text with date and page number, for example (1948, p. 17); other citations shall be by name, date, and page number (unless the author is indicated in the immediately preceding text, in which case only date and page number will be cited).
This is Lacan's word, from the opening quotation above.
Human infants are, obviously, gendered, and thus usually referred to with pronouns such as “he or she” and “him or herself.” However, since I will constantly be making pronominal reference to infants in my discussion of Lacan's account of the mirror stage, gendered but gender-neutral pronouns would become extremely awkward, making an already-complicated exposition even more muddled. (For example, the next sentence would read as follows: “The infant anticipates a not-yet-experienced coherence and unity of self as he or she recognizes him or herself in the unified body seen in the mirror.”) Hence, when making pronominal reference to infants in this paper, I shall use “it” and “itself.” This is not meant to dehumanize infants in any way (on the contrary), but rather to facilitate communication of complex ideas.
Cf. (1949) and (1951). The 1949 essay, “The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience,” is Lacan’s seminal piece on this topic. Lacan had presented the basic ideas of this essay at a conference in 1936, but no written version of that presentation was published (Muller and Richardson 1982, pp. 4, 26). Although the 1951 essay extends the 1949 discussion in several directions, the two essays are in basic agreement on the essential details of the events and consequences of the mirror stage. The only potentially significant revision concerns the dating of this stage in the infant's development, and is discussed below in footnote 7.
“His [the infant’s] joy is due to his imaginary triumph in anticipating a degree of muscular co-ordination which he has not yet actually achieved” (1951, p. 15).
Richardson underscores this point, “It is this reflected image of itself with which the infant identifies that Lacan understands by the ‘I,’ or as we would normally say, the ‘ego’” (Richardson 1978/1979, p. 98).
At one point in the beginning of “The mirror stage…,” Lacan reiterates in consecutive paragraphs the point that the initial ego-formation in the mirror stage is prior to social interaction: “…the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other…”; “…this form situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination…” (1949, p. 2). Anticipating my critique, we can paraphrase Shakespeare’s Gertrude: Lacan doth protest too much, methinks. (Shakespeare 1601/1985, p. 1941).
Again anticipating my critique of Lacan, note that by 1951 Lacan had revised his dating of the original appearance of the mirror stage from 6 to 8 months, making its manifestation simultaneous with rather than prior to these initial social interactions (see footnote 7).
This caveat is reiterated and expanded upon in Muller and Richardson (1982), p. 30. They cite Lacan’s (1938) encyclopedia article on the family, suggesting, as Richardson does here, that only the reflection of a human form is essential in the mirror stage. But the citation does not support this interpretation.
Or, la reconnaissance par le sujet de son image dans le miroir est un phénomène qui, pour l’analyse de ce stade, est deux fois significatif: le phénomène apparait après six mois et son étude à ce moment révèle de façon demonstrative les tendances qui constitutent alors la réalité du sujet; l'image spéculaire, en raison même de ces affinités, donne un bon symbole de cette réalité: de sa valeur affective, illusoire comme l'image, et de sa structure, comme elle reflet de la forme humaine. (1938, pp. 40/9–10)
Now, the recognition by the subject of its image in the mirror is a phenomenon which, for the analysis of this stage, is twice significant: the phenomenon appears after six months and the study of it at that moment reveals in a demonstrative way the tendencies that then constitute the reality of the subject; the specular image, by reason of these affinities, gives a good symbol of this reality: of its affective value, illusory as an image, and of its structure, as it reflects the human form. (my translation)
In the infant’s recognition of its own image in a mirror, it is the mirror image itself that Lacan here claims functions as a symbol; the image symbolizes the ego's illusory, fictive status as an image of the human body. This description is consistent with Lacan’s later discussions of the mirror stage; and nothing in this passage indicates that the infant can recognize itself (in the process described by the mirror stage) in its mother's body. As we’ll see in a moment, Lacan explicitly denies Richardson's suggestion. Although Richardson’s caveat is too charitable a reading of Lacan, it does in fact point us in the right direction, toward the importance of social interaction in the infant's development.
Lacan also stresses this point that it is the recognition of its own image in a mirror that prompts the infant’s jubilation at 1948, p. 18 and 1949, pp. 1–2. He also notes a striking contrast between human and chimpanzee infants at this stage of development: chimpanzees are unintrigued by the mirror image, precisely because it is “just” a reflection, not a real creature. It must be the infant’s own image in the mirror, Lacan indicates, that is so captivating. “What I have called the mirror stage is interesting in that it manifests the affective dynamism by which the subject originally identifies himself with the visual Gestalt of his own body” (1948, p. 18, last italics mine).
In fairness to Lacan, we should note here that there need not be an actual mirror: a reflective pond, windowpane, or similar surface could function as a mirror and pose no problem for his account. However, if another human is ostensibly functioning as the mirror, this does pose a problem for Lacan.
This Hegelian account will be clarified below. One can also note in passing that this dynamic recalls Socrates’ comparison of the soul knowing itself to the eye seeing itself reflected in the pupil of another (Plato n.d./1937, Steph. pp. 132c–133c).
Muller (1982b) has an extensive discussion of Lacan’s use of the Hegelian view.
On a related point, Lacan seems to misunderstand the Hegelian account in certain critical respects. For example, Lacan notes that “[a]s Hegel’s well-known doctrine puts it, the conflict arising from the co-existence of two consciousnesses can only be resolved by the destruction of one of them” (1951, p. 16). This reading, following Alexandre Kojève, entirely neglects the Hegelian discussion of mutual recognition at the heart of self-consciousness formation. See Muller (1982b, 237ff) for Lacan’s debt to Kojève; see Lynch (2001) for a critique of this misreading and a more detailed elaboration of the Hegelian view.
See footnotes 7 and 11.
Benjamin (1988) further develops the connection between Chodorow and Hegel.
For other recent assessments and appropriations of Mead's work on intersubjectivity and ego-formation, see also Aboulafia (1991); Joas (1985). Although some work has been done on the relation between Lacan and the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory (see Whitebook (1995), esp. Chap. 3; Dews (1995b); especially Dews (1995a)), more careful work on the relation between Lacan and Mead ought to be done.
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Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Scott Campbell, Janet Donohoe, Ed McGushin, and especially Bill Richardson, as well as the anonymous reviewers for Human Studies, for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Lynch, R.A. The Alienating Mirror: Toward a Hegelian Critique of Lacan on Ego-Formation. Hum Stud 31, 209–221 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9083-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9083-z