The how to read series provides a context and an explanation that will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. The mirror stage as formative of the function of the i as revealed in. Giacomo contri, torino, einaudi, free download lacan on madness madness yes you can t pdf. Brilliant and innovative, jacques lacan s work has had a tremendous influence on contemporary discourse. An introduction to jacques lacans the mirror stage. The idea of the mirror phase was one of lacan s earliest contributions, first proposed at the marienbad i stadio dello specchio. Lacan the mirror stage, the imaginary, and social media how am i not myself. The term mirror stage was coined by henri wallon 2 to describe a development phase, despite the. Free download jacques lacan e lo stadio dello specchio.
Then, i will compare the most recent theses on this particular subject. It began in 1932, with his doctoral thesis in medicine,paranoid psychosis and its relation to personality the thesis inaugurated a period that was to end on july 8, 1953, with lacans invention of three terms. I had added that in the enigmatic mirror of the ocular globe of the insect i did not see my own image. The ego in freuds theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis, 19541955. Indeed, in his discussion of the mirror stage lacan does not simply.
Introduction to lacan s theory of anxiety as the sensation of the desire of the other, through the story of the praying mantis and the example of phobia. Over twenty years after the publication of ecrits1the volume in which his major papers are collected, lacan remains highly influential in certain academic circles on this side of the channel the mirror stage. An overview of the mirror stage lacan introduces the mirror stage, a developmental stage that he observed in infants from 6 to about 18 months. He presented a paper on the mirror stage on august 3, 1936, at a conference of the international psychoanalytical association in marienbad. Formations of the unconscious, v, 19571958 the seminar of jacques lacan.
One of many of lacans focal points and references throughout the reading is that of the gestalt theory, which has great relevance in accordance to the mirror stage but also challenges its beliefs. Lacan refers to this conference in the first sentence of the essay. Initially, lacan proposed that the mirror stage was part of an infants. By calling the image of a whole, unified body orthopaedic, lacan suggests that the i formed in the mirror.
Apr 22, 2016 home literary criticism lacans concept of mirror stage. The mirror stage as formative function of the i as revealed in psychoanalytic experience lacan jacques download bok. Although it may seem strange at first to analyze mary shelleys frankenstein from a psychoanalytic perspective, the founder of psychoanalysis, sigmund freud, and french psychoanalyst jacques lacan theories of the mirror stage and the oedipal complex enable frankenstein to be read as a novel embracing psychoanalytic theories. The mirror stage as formative function of the i as. First, i will expose what appears to be the essence of lacans mirror stage. Lacans concept of mirror stage by nasrullah mambrol on april 22, 2016 5. In this stage, the infant recognizes him or herself in the mirror as a whole entity instead of the fragmented movements and undefined boundaries between self and other baby and mom especially. In his essay the mirror stage as formative of the function of the i, lacan began a lifelong effort to rescue psychoanalysis from what he saw as a mistaken conflation of the subject and the ego. Lacan calls this stage of child development the mirror stage 1285. What lacan means by the mirror stage english literature essay. Lacans reinterpretation of freud, with the central focus on language, brought about a poststructuralist turn to psychoanalytic theory. Understanding the mirror stage of lacan english literature essay. He has some genuinely good ideas notably the mirror stage, the short session, and the conception of psychoanalysis removed from medicine. Nov 16, 2017 lacans theories are widely used in postmodern literature, film studies and also psychotherapy.
This occurrence between the child, the childs reflection and his progression is what lacan calls the mirror stage. Pdf my intention in this article is to evaluate lacans theory of the mirror stage in accordance with. What was the nature of lacans first encounter with the freudian text. Lacans model of the mirror stage allows one to understand the concept of the i in the human psyche and also provides an opposition against decartes famous philosophical statement cogito ergo sum i think therefore i am. The conception of the mirror stage that i introduced at our last congress, thirteen years. Discussions on love by lacan can be found everywhere in his works, from the early seminars to the latter ones. Drawing on work in physiology and animal psychology, lacan proposes that human infants pass through a stage in which an external image of the body reflected in a mirror. The idea of the mirror stage is an important early component in lacan s critical reinterpretation of the work of freud. Pdf in the 1950s jacques lacan developed a setup with a concave mirror and a plane mirror, based on which he described the nature of human. Its also essential reading for anyone interested in lacan due to the prevalence of the mirror stage s concepts found throughout his entire oeuvre. It has excited an enormous amount of interest among his followers and the essay he devoted to it was written and. He began work in the 1950s, in the freudian society there.
An introductory dictionary of lacanian psychoanalysis jacques lacan is arguably the most original and influential psychoanalytic thinker since freud. The mirrorstage is a stage when the child learns the concept of the self as being distinct from the body. Punctum, object a, and the richterian blur by victor d. The argument which he goes on to develop is far from being merely an incidental fragment of his work. Lacans ideas about the formation of the i developed over time in conjunction with his other elaborations of freudian theory. He argued that by working with free association, psychoanalysis aims to. How are lacan s essays the agency of the letter in the unconscious and the mirror stage as.
First, i will expose what appears to be the essence of lacan s mirror stage. The mirror stage is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror literal or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside themselves from the age of about six months. The conception of the mirror stage that i introduced at our last congress. Analysis of jacques lacans psychoanalysis psiberite.
The conception of the mirror stage that author introduced at our last congress, thirteen years ago, has since become established in the practice of. Lacan was much taken with an observation by the french psychologist, henri. Lacan on gaze yuanlong ma the school of liberal arts renmin university of china 59 zhong gun cun avenue haidian district, beijing pr china zip code. Jan 16, 2004 lacan was the vanguard of the french neofreudian lay psychoanalyst movement.
In his paper titled mirror stage 1949, lacan expounds the concept of the mirror stage that occurs between 618 months of a childs development, when the child begins to draw rudimentary distinction between the self and the other, as it encounters its image in the mirror. An overview of the mirror stage university of tennessee. Jacques lacan was a parisian psychoanalyst who has influenced literary criticism and feminism. Partially examined life podcast lacan the mirror stage. For lacan, the woman can no longer trust the words of a man who tells her i love you, because the man might mean something totally different from what he is articulating. Lacans construction and deconstruction of the doublemirror device. In order to recognize myself, i have to be separate from my self. The online journal of the san francisco society for lacanian studies 2019 paper. Since art imitates life, an in depth exploration of the way that these scenes play out can illuminate how lacans abstract theories might look in the real life formation of identity and in malefemale relations. But were i to build on these subjective data alonewere i to so. Pdf is lacans theory of the mirror stage still valid. The mirror stage as formative of the function 79 metaphors for which arise spontaneously, as if deriving from the subjects very symptoms, to designate the mechanisms of obsessive neurosis.
The cambridge companion to lacan thiscollectionofspeciallycommissionedessaysbyacademicsandpracticing psychoanalysts explores key dimensions of jacques lacans life. His ideas have revolutionised the clinical practice of psychoanalysis and continue to have a major impact in fields as diverse as film studies, literary criticism, feminist theory and philosophy. The presence of jacques lacans mirror stage and gaze in. Psicanalise lacaniana jacques lacan 19011981 download. Lacan believes that this stage is a part of a machinelike process of our psychological growth that reinforces his belief in paranoiac knowledge 1286, which is to say that he believes the formation of self that we experience while looking in a mirror is part of. Ranging from the mirror stage to the subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the freudian unconscious, and including the pdf function and field of speech and language in. Robert louis stevenson, jacques lacan, rouben mamoulian, strange case. Like the real, lacan stressed the ongoing nature of the mirror stage throughout our lives as we constantly strive for this ideali. The mirror stage as formative of the function of the i as. But were i to build on these subjective data alonewere i to so much as free them from the experiential condition that makes me view them as based on a.
It does so by concentrating on lacans notion of the mirror stage. Lacans mirror stage terry gamels writing portfolio. If we imagine the i formed in the mirror stage as a kind of internal fortification against the forces of the id, on the one hand, and, on the other, as the defensive suit of armor in which the subject ventures into the world, we can understand what lacan means by the inertia that is characteristic of this i. All sorts of things in this world behave like mirrors.
Lacans concept of mirror stage literary theory and. It was a time when those official ties meant somethingwhen one could be expelled for deviation, as if from the communist party. May 17, 2001 lacan was the vanguard of the french neofreudian lay psychoanalyst movement. An introduction to jacques lacans the mirror stage youtube. Lacans concept of mirror stage literary theory and criticism. Jacques lacan, the seminar of jacques lacan, book ii.