“This act, far from exhausting itself, as with the chimpanzee, once the image has been mastered and found empty, in the child immediately rebounds in a series of gestures in which he playfully experiences the relations of the assumed movements of the image to the reflected environment, and of this virtual complex to the reality it reduplicates the child's own body, and the persons or even things in his proximity.” (Lacan, page 442)
In The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, Lacan stated about an infant age 6-18 months about his own experience seeing chimpanzee and its behavior. Looking at chimpanzee’s movements made him recognize the differentiation with his own movements. He would find out that he was different from the chimpanzee looked from the movement and the images he saw on the mirror. He started gain experience in series of gesture, his environment, and people around him. Then he would find out about his own moving.
” We have only to understand the mirror-phase as an identification, in the full sense which analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation which takes place in the subject when he assumes an image -whose predestination to this phase-effect is sufficiently indicated by the use, in analytical theory, of the old term imago.” (Lacan, page 442)
Unable yet to do many activities such as walking and standing, and infant would ask other people to help him to fix his attitude to get proper image on the mirror. Realizing the difference of objects he saw on the mirror made him understand the reflection of himself on the mirror. Lacking of intelligibility about his position or place in family or society, he would understand himself narrowly as “I”, that was different from other people that is not-I. When he started to understand about the language, he would know about interaction and know more about himself. Thus he was able to see the Other.
“…the mirror-image would seem to be the threshold of the visible world, if we go by the mirror disposition which theimago of our own body presents in hallucinations or dreams, whether it concerns its individual features, or even its infirmities, or its object-projections; or if we notice the role of the mirror apparatus in the appearances of the double, in which psychic realities, however heterogeneous, manifest themselves.” (Lacan, page 443)
The reflection that an infant saw in the mirror seems real. It seems like the threshold of the visible world. When he saw his reflection, he would see the whole reflection of his body. Meanwhile, without seeing the mirror, he could not see his body as unity. His body would be fragmented into many parts. He would only saw his hands seem like hanging in the air and his foot that separated from the body. However, it seems impossible for “I” to see himself as a unity. He can only see the unity through the mirror.
Work Cited
Lacan, J. (n.d.). The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.
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