Jacques Lacan is a 20 th -century French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who pioneered the concept of the mirror stage of development in children. Laan was a keen devotee of Sigmund Freud’s ‘Psychoanalysis’ and Ferdinand Saussure’s ‘Structuralism,’ which he applied to psychoanalysis. In 1936, Lacan introduced his initial idea of the mirror stage and argued that it had an immense impact on the psychological development of children. He published an amended version of the initial theory at the conference of the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Zurich. In the reviewed version, Lacan concluded the mirror stage had a lifelong impact on an individual. According to Lacan, the first time that a child sees itself in a mirror triggers a cascade of mental reactions that mold the mentality of the child going forward. Lacan also intimated that human children experience premature births. Most other animals have a semblance of independence at birth and may survive even in the absence of a third party. However, human babies need constant attention at birth, or they will die. Therefore, in the first few months of their lives, children do not realize that they are independent beings as there is always a caring third party mother-figure involved (Lacan, 2004). The first look into the mirror after the age of six months is thus both a moment of transformation and a source of dread. This first look creates a realization that there is individuality but also a quest to establish what the uniqueness entails. In different measures, the first look in the mirror triggers narcissism, ego, alienation, and hostility for the infants, all of which will subsist for most of its life.
The Premature Stage
Among the fundamental facts associated with the mirror stage argument is the concept of premature births among humans and other high primates. The idea of premature birth is not a philosophical or theoretical issue but rather a statement of fact. At the point of delivery, human infants will either have a guardian or die. In most cases, the guardian is either the mother or a mother figure. This guardian is always so close and intertwined with the infants during the first few months that the infant cannot tell where it ends, and its mother begins. When the child is hungry, it somehow gets fed. At other times the child finds itself moving from one point to the other at the whims of the mother. Further, at this stage, looking at a mirror cannot make a difference as the infant is too young to interpret the images inside the mirror.
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The Role of the Mother
Due to the interconnectedness between the infant and its guardian could easily consider itself as a part of the mother’s body, not an independent entity. Lacan calls this relationship the mother/child dyad. The association works best for the child, which only needs to fulfill its desires. The child lives in a world without responsibilities, aspirations, or plans. Since the guardian handles everything, this initial stage in the child’s life is some kind of utopia. Unfortunately, if a child remains in this dependent stage past the early development stage, it may have developmental challenges (Burgoyne, 1997). Further, how the guardian, mainly the mother, treats the child during the mirror stage is a crucial determinant of the kind of personality the child will develop in the mirror stage.
Unification and Wholeness
For the child to attain a full mirror state experience it as to both, see its image and also recognize it. Failure to recognize the image may be as a result of the prematurity of development problems such as autism. The inability of the child to see and distinguish itself in the mirror will interfere with its ability to generate unification and wholeness. Unification in this context means the ability to recognize all its parts and realize that they belong to it. Wholesomeness, on the other hand, refers to an element of oneness where the child realizes that it has every part necessary to become a complete person. According to Bailly (2009), the absence of unification and wholeness may affect the social skills of a child. For example, the lack of eye contact in autistic children may result from an inability to recognize the self. Without self-recognition, a child may not understand the need to interact with others socially.
Narcissism and Ego
The mirror image has various varying effects on the minds of the child, which contribute to the psychological development of the child. First, the mirror stage triggers the growth of narcissism in the child. For clarity, the narcissism in this context is a positive thing and not the kind associated with sociopathy. The child begins to realizes that it is an independent entity, which leads to the development of a personality. However, personality development will also depend on how the mother behaves towards the child (Pines, 1984). Parental skills are, thus, crucial during the mirror stage. Before the mirror stage, the child is just an extension of the guardian, but after the mirror experience, the child begins to assert itself based on its fledgling personality. According to Lacan (1977), narcissism includes the baby starting to fall in love with the image of itself that sees in the mirror.
Alienation and Hostility
Further, the mirror stage also triggers a partial psychological alienation of the baby from itself, which complicates the development of the ego, according to Fonagy et al., (2009). Lacan contends that the ego is the “I” factor of the child, which develops when the child begins to see itself as an independent entity. The definition of “I” is convoluted since it combines the baby’s consciousness on the one hand and the image in the mirror on the other. Therefore, the ego of the child has a twofold center, based on the two entities, which may lead to the feeling of decentralization referred, hence the concept of alienation. Further, the mirror stage may also trigger feelings of hostility towards the image in the mirror. According to Bailly (2009), the image in the mirror becomes a reflection of what the babe considers itself to be. However, Joan Copjec argues that the baby will most probably find the picture as flawed and not as part of how the baby sees itself. Such feelings will lead to hostility towards the image in the mirror.
Conclusion
Based on the research and analysis above, the mirror stage is critical to the psychological development of a child. In human children, the mirror image may come as a surprise due to the premature birth that leaves newborns highly dependent on their guardians. The mirror stage gives the child the first opportunity to realize that it is an independent entity with its own body. The child begins to have self-realization through the advent of narcissism and the development of the ego. However, most children will consider themselves better than the images they see in the mirror, leading to an element of hostility. A critical, independent factor in the mirror stage is phylogenetic inference.
