The Mirror Stage - Lacan
The Mirror Stage - Lacan
xiv
Bibliographical note
,.,,,
,
,.,
, ,!
,,,,
on the autho<s seminar for the first two semesters of the year 1955-6.
,,Written December 195danuary 1958. Published in L a PychMalye,
~01.4,P.U.F., 1959, PP. 1-50.
T k s&~cation of tkPMu
L a Sigmjrcation du p h d ~ u .Lecture given in German under the title
Die Beahieunmg der P h d I u at the Max-Planck Institute, Munich, at the
invitation of Professor Paul Matussek, 9 May, 1958.
The direction of the treatment and the principles of its power
L a direction de la cure et I s principer de son pouvoir. First report to the
, ,
..
ONE
~f
fMf
The conception of the mirror stage that I introduced at our last congress,
thirteen years ago, has since become more or less established in the
practice of the French group. However, I think it worthwhile to bring it
again to your attention, espeaally today, for the light it sheds on the
formation of the I as we experienceit in psychoanalysis. It is an experience
that leads us to oppose any philosophy directly issuing from the Cogiro.
Some of you may recall that this conception originated in a feature of
hnrnan behaviour illuminated by a fact of comparative psychology. The
child, at an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the
chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recogn k as such his own image in a mirror. This recognition is indicated in
the illuminative mimicry of the Aha-Erlebnir, which Kohler sees as the
expression of situational apperception, an essential stage of the act of
inieIligence.
This act, far from exhausting itself, as in the case of the monkey, once
the image has been mastered -and found empty, immediately rebounds
in the case of the child in a series of gmtures in which he experiences in
play the relation between the movements assumed in the image and the
reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it
reduplicates - the child's own body, and the persons and things, around
him.
This event can take place, as we have known since Baldwin, from the
age of six months, and its repetition has often made me reflect upon the
startling spectacle of the infant in front of the mirror. Unable as yet to
walk, or even to stand up, and held tightly as he is by some support,
human or artifiaal (what, in France, we caU a 'rrotte-&M), he nevertheless
overcomes, in a Buner of jubilant activity, the obstructions of his support
h i t s : A Selection
T h e mirror stage
c,,\\;>
T h e mirror
. . stage
which the Surrealists, in their restless way, saw as its limitation. These
dectiom lead me to recognize in the spatial raptation manifested in the
mirror-stage, even before the social dialectic, the dect in man of an
organic insufficiency in his natural reality - in so far as any meaning can
be given to the word 'nature'.
I am led, therefore, to regard the function of the mirror-stage as a
paaicular case of the function of the imago, which is to establish a relation
between the organism and its reality - or, as they say, between the
I m w e l t and the Umwelt.
In man, however, this relation to nature is altered by a certain dehiscence at the heart of the organism, a primordial Discord betrayed by
the sighs of uneasiness and motor unco-ordination of the neo-natal
months. The objective notion of the anatomical incompleteness of the
pyramidal system and likewise the presence of certain humoral residues
of the maternal organism confirm the view I have formulated as the fdct
of a real spec;f;cPremanuity ofbirrh in man.
It is worth noting, incidentally, that this is a fact recognized as such by
embryologists, by the termfoetdrarion, which determines the prevalence
of the so-called superior apparatus of the n e w , and especially of the
cortex, which psycho-surgical operatiom lead us to regard as the intraorganic mirror.
This development is experienced as a temporal dialectic that decisively
projects the formation of the individual into history. The mirror stage is
a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to antidpation - and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of
spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a
fragmented body-image to a form of in totality that I sM1 call orthopaedic - and, lastly, to the assumption of the amour of an alienating
identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire
mental development. Thus, to break out of the circle of theImnwelt into
the Umwelt generates the inexhaustible quadrature of the ego's verifications.
This fragmented body - which term I have also introduced into our
system of theoretical refemces - usually manifests itself in dreams when
the movement of the analysis encounters a certain level of aggressive
disintegration in the individual. It then appears in the form of disjointed
limbs, or of those organs represented in exoscopy, growing wings and
taking up arms for intestinal perjecutions - the very same that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch has fixed, for all time, in painting, in their ascent
5 .
from the fifteenth century to the imaginary qetiith of modem man. But this
form is even tangibly revealed at the organic l&el,jn the lines of 'fragilization' that define the anatoiny of phantaed exhibited in the schizoid.and
spasmodic symptoms of hysteria.
Correlatively, the formation of the 7.
is symbolized in dreams by a
fortress, or a stadium - its.inner arena and enclosure, h o u n d e d by .
marshes and rubbish-tips,.dividiig it:into two opposed fields of,contest
where the subject flound&~
in, que$t bf the'lofty, remote inner castle
whose form (sometimes jwaposed in the.s+e scenario) symbolizes the , .~
id in a quite startling way.'Similarly, ~hfheinentsl.~lane,wefind
realized
the structures of fortifig ,works, the ,metaphor of which arises spon- . .
taqeously, as if issuing gio+ the:symptbis themselves, to designate the
mechanisms of obsessional neurosis.- invehibn, isplation, fedupliration,
cancellation and displackment;
But if we were to build qn these subjecti"e givens alone - however
us see ;
little we, free them fm& the conditioh of experience thatthem as partaking of the nature of a lin&tic technique -our theoretical
attempts would remain'exposed.to the charge of.projecting;themselves
into the unthinkable ofan absolute subject. This is why I have sought in
:
the pment hypothesis, e;rp&ded in a conjunctibnof objective' data, the'
. ' I ,
guiding grid for a method of ryndolic redurtwn.
It establishes in the defences of the ego a genetic order, in accor&nce
. .
with the wish formdated by Misi Ant+ Freud; in the G t '&t of her, .
,A"
great work, and siniates (as agaiiist a ' frequently'expressed,prejudice)
.P
hysterical repression and:its retums' at a more'archaic stage than o b - ,LL ,
sessional inversion and its i<olat&g.pmcesses, and the latter in turn'&. 4
'. .'
.i
preliminary to paranoic &=nation, which.dat&.from the deflection of the , .ib*
.
.,.
specular I into the social I. ; .
.
This moment in whicl, the mirror-stage cdfnes to & end iniugurates,
,
'by the identification with the imagogo'of the c o u n t e h q and thi dr+a.of . . .. . ,
primordial .jealousy'(so well bmu& out by .& &ool of Charlotte
Biihler in the phenomenon of hfantile crm+icm), the dialectic.thatwill
henceforthlink'the I to socially eworated situations.
It.is thismomcnt that decisively tips the wholk of human knbGledge
i:
,
&to mediatiiatiqi +rough &'desire of the,othei, .consustes its objects
i n &s&t eqqivalence by the.co-operation of others, and tums the I
i n t ~that a p p ~ t &.for .which every: inshctual- thrust constitutes a
danger, eveh though it-should &rrespond to a
maturatior) -.the
very normalization of this maturation being 'henceforth depeiden< in ;
. .
...
. .
.
"
..
5
.
'
'
,:
. .
' .
..
: :
S-
, . .
'
- ..
..
.. .
.
,
6
.
- ;.
.
,
Ecrits:
A Selection
T h e mirror stage
$3