Mirror Stadium in Lacan and Oedipus Complex

Even before the structuring of the “I” in the child, he goes through a phase called mirror stadium🇧🇷 “The “mirror stage” is ordered essentially from a fundamental identification experience, during which the child conquers the image of his own body.” (DOR, 1989, p. 79)

We call this experience primordial identification, the child identifies with his image and structures his “I”. What precedes this infantile psychic event, Lacan names ghost of the shattered body🇧🇷 “In fact, before the mirror stage, the child does not initially experience his body as a unified totality, but as something dispersed.” (DOR, 1989, p. 79)

During the mirror stage, which is divided into three stages, from the first 6 months to 2 and a half years of life, the child will slowly become aware of the totality of his body image. For Dor (1989, p. 79) “this first period of experience testifies in favor of a confusion first between yourself and the other🇧🇷

All this first period of the mirror stage shows that the child is structuring his imaginary and the moment time is the stage that constitutes the identification🇧🇷 Now she already knows that the other in the mirror is a reflected image, therefore for Dor (1989, p. 79) “in general her behavior indicates that she knows, from now on, to distinguish Image from the other of reality from the other.”

In the third time Dor (1989, p. 80) states:

The third moment dialectizes the two preceding stages, not only because the child is sure that the reflection in the mirror is an image, but, above all, because he acquires the conviction that it is nothing more than an image, and that it is his.

Therefore, the child exchanges the image he had of a shattered body, for one of a body with its unified totality. For Dor (1989, p.80) “The image of the body is, therefore, structuring for the identity of the subject, who through it realizes his/her identity. primordial identification.🇧🇷

In conclusion, the mirror stage is the conquest of identity, the child already knows how to differentiate himself from the other, thus performing a “pre-formation” of the “I (Je)”.

First Moment of Oedipus

“On leaving the identification phase of the mirror stage, the child, in whom a subject is already outlined, does not cease to be in a relationship of almost fusional indistinction with the mother.” (DOR, 1989, pp. 80-81)

This means that the child has not yet completely constituted a subject and is still very dependent on the mother. According to Dor (1989, p. 81) “trying to identify with what he supposes to be the object of his desire.”

This occurs from the satisfaction of the first childish needs, the child seeks to be the object of desire of the mother’s desire. This care that the mother has with her child makes him want to be the object of what the mother is supposed to lack, the phallus. “As Lacan observes, in the first phase of Oedipus, the child’s desire remains radically subject to the mother’s desire”. (DOR, 1989, p. 81)

In this first moment of Oedipus everything happens in the fact that the child does not believe in castration. Therefore, there is only a fusional relationship between the child and the mother, because there seems to be no third party to mediate the child’s phallic identification with his mother.

Dor (1989, p. 81) states that: “as much as the mediating instance (the Father) is here considered strange to the mother-child relationship, it is the very dimension of the child’s phallic identification in this relationship that presupposes it.”

We can say, therefore, that the identification with the phallic object that makes the mediation of castration be avoided, reinforces even more the dialectical indecision between being or not being the phallus.

“The emergence of such indecision heralds the second stage of the Oedipus complex, in which the child is unavoidably introduced into the castration register by the intrusion of the paternal dimension.” (DOR, 1989, p. 81)

Throughout the foundation of Oedipus in children, fixation on an unstable equilibrium point may occur, that is, instability may occur in being or not being the phallus. The suspension of this question, that of being or not being the phallus, favors perverse identifications. This perpetuates an indecision regarding castration, no matter how small the misunderstanding about the role of the symbolic function of the father.

Therefore, for Dor (1989, p. 81) “the perverse identification poses, in negative, the double but solid question of maternal deprivation of its phallic object and the child’s disconnection from his identification with such an object.”

Second Moment of Oedipus

At that moment, the paternal intrusion will be very important in the mother-child-phallus relationship. The father will bring the deprivation, the one who deprives the mother of her phallic object of desire.

The intrusion of the father’s presence is seen by the child as interdiction and frustration. Here the father is a tease for what he forbids, the satisfaction of the impulse, therefore, as the mother is the father’s and not the child’s, he frustrates the mother’s child.

According to Dor (1989, p. 83)

In other words, the paternal intrusion in the mother-child-phallus relationship manifests itself in apparently distinct registers: the prohibition, frustration and the deprivation. Things get even more complicated when it turns out that the combined action of the dad, simultaneously interdict, frustrate, deprive, tends to catalyze his fundamental function as a father castrator.

The Missing Object

Before we continue, it is important to talk about the lack of the object. There are three ways that the lack of the object can manifest itself, which can occur in children or adults, they are: frustration, deprivation and castration. However, although in all these cases we are talking about the lack of an object, there are different ways that this occurs, in each case and the type of object.

“THE frustration it is the scope par excellence of the claim, with the proviso that in this case no possibility of satisfaction can be found. Indeed, in frustration, lack is a imaginary harm (DOR, 1989, p. 83).” On the other hand, the object of frustration is completely real. The prototype of this object would be the penis, where, in girls, its absence is a source of frustration.

“In a more general sense, the child experiences the absence of a penis in the mother as a frustration.” (DOR, 1989, p. 83)

With regard to deprivation, the lack is what is real, the lack of an object leaves a hole in the real. However, the object of deprivation is a symbolic object.

Regarding castration, its absence is symbolic, because it refers to the interdiction of incest, which is the symbolic reference par excellence. “That is why the paternal function is operative, determining, for the child, his own access to the symbolic.” (DOR, 1989, p. 83).

The lack signified by castration is a symbolic debt. But the missing object is imaginary, the phallus.

In short, as Dor explains (1989. p. 84), it follows:

“— castration is the symbolic fault of an imaginary object,
— frustration is the imaginary lack of a real object,
— deprivation is the actual lack of a symbolic object.”

In the second moment of Oedipus, the child encounters the paternal law, which is confronted with the castration that challenges him through the dialectic of having, whose mother is dependent from now on. Therefore, the second moment of Oedipus is indispensable for the child to experience in order to access the symbolization of the law, marking the decline of the Oedipus complex.

According to Dor (1989 p. 87)

the child is, from now on, forced by the paternal function to accept, not only not being the phallus, but also not having it, like the mother, realizing that she wants him there where he is supposed to be and where it then becomes possible to have it.

Third Moment of Oedipus

The third moment is where the decline of the Oedipus phase occurs, ending the phallic rivalry around the mother, which the child installed and installed, imaginarily, his father.

Dor (1989, p. 88) states:

The fundamental time of this stage is marked by the symbolization of the law, which best attests that the child has received its full significance. The structuring value of this symbolization lies, for her, in determining the exact place of the mother’s desire.

The dialectic of having leads to the game of identifications. Depending on the child’s gender, it will be inscribed differently in the identification logic mobilized by the phallic game. The boy, who renounces being the maternal phallus, engages in the dialectic of having, identifying himself with the father who supposedly has the phallus. The girl can also withdraw from the position of object of her mother’s desire and encounter the dialectic of having in the form of not having. She thus finds a possible identification in her mother.

The replacement of the phallus in its proper place is structuring for the child, regardless of gender, from the moment that the father, who supposedly has it, has preference over the mother. It is the clearest proof of the installation of father metaphor process and the intrapsychic mechanism that is correlative to it: the original repression.

About the Oedipal process, the most important thing is the establishment of the lack. “We renounce the mother to create an empty zone that, later, can be occupied by other objects. Our libido is more or less exiled from our body and linked to the signal of absence.” (LEADER, 2013, p. 50)

Leader (2013) points out that the Oedipus complex performs, firstly, the introduction to meaning, linking the question of the mother’s desire to an answer: the father and the phallus. Second, it locates the libido, the intensity of our sexual attachments and interests, making the forbidden image of the mother the horizon of sexual desire. Third, it allows us to situate ourselves in relation to the Other, to find a safe distance and move to another space where there is not simply us and her.

Author: Pablo Laffaet

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DOR, Joel. Introduction to reading Lacan: The unconscious structured as language. translation Carlos Eduardo Reis; supervision and technical revision of the Cláudia Corbisier translation. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 1989.

LEADER, Darian. What is madness?: Delirium and sanity in everyday life. translation by Vera Ribeiro. 1st ed. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2013.

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