The Mirror Phase – Lacan

Imaginary and Mirror Phase – Lacan

In this text, we are going to talk about the Imaginary. And, for that, it is productive to start with the Mirror Phase or Mirror Stage – which is Lacan’s first contribution to psychoanalytic theory, in the 1930s, when Freud was still alive.

But as far as I know, the two theorists never met.

Well, to start talking about the Imaginary, let’s use the definition of the Vocabulary of Psychoanalysis by Laplanche and Pontalis, which I will comment on next:

I will fully quote here the short article from the Vocabulary of Psychoanalysis, by Laplanche and Pontalis, about the Mirror Phase:

“According to J. Lacan, phase of the constitution of the human being that is located between six and eighteen months; the child, still in a state of impotence and motor incoordination, imaginarily anticipates the apprehension and mastery of his bodily unit.

This imaginary unification operates through identification with the image of the similar as a total form; it is illustrated and updated by the concrete experience in which the child perceives his own image in a mirror.

The mirror phase would constitute the matrix and outline of what the ego would be.

The conception of the mirror phase is one of J. Lacan’s oldest contributions, presented by him in 1936 at the International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Marienbad.

This conception is supported by a certain number of experimental data grouped as follows:

1) Data taken from child psychology and comparative psychology regarding children’s behavior in front of their image in the mirror. Lacan insists on “…the triumphant assumption of the image as the joyful mime that accompanies it and the playful complacency in controlling the specular identification.

2) Data taken from animal ethology that show certain effects of maturation and biological structuring operated by the simple visual perception of the similar.

The achievement of the mirror phase in man must be linked, according to Lacan, to premature birth, objectively attested by the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal system, and to the motor incoordination of the first months.

From the point of view of the subject’s structure, the mirror phase would mark a fundamental moment: the constitution of the first draft of the ego. Indeed, the child perceives in the image of the similar or in his own mirror image a form (Gestalt) in which he anticipates – and hence his “joy” a bodily unity that he objectively lacks and identifies with that image.

This primordial experience is at the base of the imaginary character of the ego, immediately constituted as the “ideal ego” and “origin of secondary identifications”.

We see that, in this perspective, the subject is not reducible to the ego, an imaginary, dual instance, turned to the aggressive tension in which the ego is constituted as an other, and the other as an alter ego.

This conception could be approximated to the Freudian points of view on the passage from autoeroticism – prior to the constitution of the ego – to narcissism itself, since what Lacan calls fantasy of the “fragmented body” corresponds to the first stage, and the mirror phase to the advent of primary narcissism.

But with an important caveat: for Lacan, it would be the mirror phase that would retroactively make the fantasy of the fragmented body appear. This dialectical relationship is observed in psychoanalytic treatment: sometimes one sees the anguish of fragmentation due to the loss of narcissistic identification, and vice versa.

It is important to highlight some aspects:

For psychoanalysis, the psyche does not have a center. It is constituted (whether in the first topic of the conscious, preconscious and unconscious; or in the second of the ego, superego and it or id) by the struggle, by the conflict of the partial drives.

However, in the mirror phase, between six months and eighteen months there is the formation of an ego unit. Through the image of the other there is the creation of an image of the self. In other words, there is the creation of a unity by the image. Hence the fact that we explain the imaginary, primarily through the mirror phase.

The mirror phase is another way to talk about narcissism. If you don’t know what narcissism is, remember the Greek myth of Narcissus, the one who drowned in the waters of the river, looking and admiring his own image. This is the literary reference that Freud uses to elaborate the term.

The first text in which we see the idea of ​​narcissism is in an article by Freud from 1914, Introduction to Narcissism. Until his death in 1939, there were several changes in the theory of narcissism.

But we can roughly define two narcissisms: primary and secondary. Quoting Rodinesco,

“Primary narcissism is a first stage, prior to the formation of the ego and therefore auto-erotic, through which the child sees his own person as the object of exclusive love – a state which precedes the ability to turn towards objects. external. With this comes the constitution of the ideal self. Secondary narcissism results from the transfer to the ego of investments in objects in the external world. Both narcissisms seem to be a defense against aggressive impulses.”

And why is there the other? The mirror image is the image of another, isn’t it? It is another that is me, but it is still another – it presents itself outside of me.

With this, the issue of identification that we have with others is also explained.

In psychoanalysis, the ego is created from a bundle of identifications. Each trait of the ego leads to identification with another, now with the mother, now with the father, now with the brother, and with other others… Is there unity in this? Not. The unit is only imaginary. A fantasy, a ghost.

As Roudinesco tells us: “The other is the object of desire that consciousness desires in a negative specular relationship that allows it to recognize itself in him”.

A very interesting example – of the problems that can arise from relations of alterity that are mirrored – is that of the relationship between the Irish and the English.

In my master’s degree I studied some books by the author James Joyce, especially A portrait of the Artist as a young man and his sketch called Stephen Hero. Joyce was Irish and in Joyce’s time – who was born in 1882 – Ireland was a colony of England. With that, there was an imaginary relationship between the two peoples.

The English looked at the Irish as drunkards, lazy, poor, Catholic.

The Irish looked at the English as arrogant, mean, Protestant…

Who has the truth? Nobody…

In the imaginary relation, there is a falsifying opposition. Note that each one is defined based on the look of the other, based on the look on the other.

There is an ambivalence here, a love-hate relationship, an insoluble relationship.

This type of projection is very common in the consulting room and it is very important that the analyst does not fall for this nonsense, this decoy.

There is a need, in the clinic, to move from these specular relationships to the symbolic, to enter the signifying chain – that is why it is so important for the analyst to frustrate the initial demand, which is usually based on an imaginary relationship.

“Every demand is a demand for love”, Lacan tells us.

Demand is not a word often used in Portuguese, in everyday life. We can think of demand as an order. The initial complaint of the patient who arrives for analysis is a demand. Love my problem, love me.

If the analyst falls for this demand, he will establish an imaginary relationship with the patient, love-hate, ambivalent and mistaken.

To get out of a relationship like that of the Irish and the English, or like the (imaginary) relationship that exists between men and women (in naive feminisms) we have to question these positions for themselves.

In the case of feminism, as did Julia Kristeva – an important psychoanalyst as well as a literary critic – who questioned the very definition, signifier, of what the word man is, of what the word woman is.

Going to the field of language, we are in the field of significant games, no longer the master-slave relationship, my mirror….

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