From:
       "Donald L. Carveth" <[log in to unmask]>

1:54 PM

> From:
>        Luís Mitras <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Sun 2:37 PM
>
> Hi,
>
> Just a few comments following Bernie Kaplan's posting and my earlier
> posting.
>
> Henri Wallon (1879-1962) published his paper on the 'mirror test' in 1931.
> The reference is as follows: "Comment se développe chez l'enfant la notion
> de corps propre" Journal de Psychologie. Nov-Dec 1931.
>
> His theory is basically that the child while looking a the mirror will begin
> to make out (or distinguish) his or her own body, and as a result of a
> symoblic comprehension of this, he or she will achieve some some sort of
> 'imaginary unity'.
>
> Lacan uses Wallon's terminology, but uses the word 'stage' in the Freudian
> or Kleinian sense.
>
> Elisabeth Roudinesco (no Lacanian) says Lacan's mirror stage has 'little to
> do with a real stage or real mirrors' (Dictionnaire de la Psychanalyse). She
> adds that the mirror stage is a 'psychical -- or even ontological --
> operation through which the human being is constituted by an identification
> with the other' -- the specular ego.
>
> What Lacan says in Seminar I is that child sees his or her own reflection in
> an inverted form. He goes on about what can learn from the study of optics.
> It is obvious (at least in this Seminar) that he is not talking about a
> literal reflection. There is a presentation in the Seminar (by one of his
> colleagues) of a case of an abused and abandoned boy, the 'wolf'. The
> 'mirror reflection' here is that of a wolf, which was not something he had
> seen but a word he had heard.
>
> Françoise Dolto, probably the best known child therapist in France in the
> last century, rewrote the 'mirror stage' as 'body image'. She wrote an
> entire book about it. Lacan never complained. He thought very highly of
> Dolto's clinical work.
>
> The Lacanians I have been reading don't seem to treat the mirror as real.
> Nasio, for example, ia adamant there is no mirror for an imaginary
> identification to occur.
>
> Perhaps the confusion comes from the appropriation of the Lacanian concept
> of the 'mirror stage' by film theory. I am thinking, particularly, of
> Christian Metz's paper on the 'imaginary signifier' and the way this spawned
> Mulvey and all that other works on the gaze, the male gaze, & voyeurism.
>
> These are some random remarks. I don't think we need to agree with Lacan's
> idea of the mirror stage -- or Dolto's conception of the body image -- but
> the least we can do is try to understand what they are really saying.
>
> Regards
>
> Luís Mitras

I am no Lacanian but, interpreted metaphorically, the idea of the ego as an
alienated and alienating identification resulting in a narcissistic
preoccupation with a dead image (idolatry), in this case a self-image, to the
exclusion of one's real life (what Winnicott called one's "going on being")
makes sense to me.  But then, I have always appreciated Lacan's catholicization
of psychoanalysis.

Best,

Don
--
Donald L. Carveth,
Training & Supervising Analyst
Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis (IPA)
Editor-in-Chief, _Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue Canadienne
de Psychanalyse_: http://home.ican.net/~analyst/cjp.htm
Editor, _Kleinian Studies_: http://human-nature.com/ksej
York University, Glendon College
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4N3M6
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"Theory is fine, but it doesn't prevent things from existing."
    --Jean Martin Charcot