pyramidal system [of babies].”^19 In other words, human babies cannot walk, and
are absolutely dependent on adults to carry out all basic vital tasks: adopting
Freud’s terminology, Lacan defines this prolonged “primordial Discord” as a state
of helplessness (Hilflosigkeit). In parallel, human babies demonstrate a precociously
refined power of vision. It is precisely against this background that the peculiarly
(de)formative function of the human Gestalt qua specular image has to be under-
stood: the completeness of the subject’s body image as reflected in the mirror pro-
vides him with a form of unity that compensates for human helplessness. Yet at the
same time, the attraction exercised on manqua animal by the Gestaltacquires for him
a completely different meaning: animals instinctively “recognize” other animals,
and are thus able to carry out basic vital processes, but they do not alienate them-
selves in the image. On the other hand, man identifies himself with the specular
image in order to make up for his original helplessness.^20 This is why Lacan states
that “the mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from in-
sufficiency to anticipation”:^21 that is to say, organicinsufficiency (helplessness) is
supplemented by an idealimaginary unity. Such an anticipated form of mastery—
which makes the baby rejoice—is a “drama,” as Lacan says, if not a tragedy, since
it necessarily superimposes alienation upon identification, thus making it forever
impossible for the subject to achieve the perfect self-identity of the external alien-
ated image with which he identifies. To put it differently, the imaginary alienating
identification that attempts to remedy original helplessness renders man an even
lessadapted animal: in order to carry out his species-oriented sexual functions, he
will then need to undergo a readaptation that, as we shall see later, can only be cul-
turally mediated by what psychoanalysis calls “complexes.”
( 3 ) The alienating identification with the specular image is rapidly “precipitated,”
as Lacan says, since, in concomitance with the capture or captivation operated by
the mirror image, the baby also experiences a simultaneous image of his own
body’s fragmentation; this can be understood either as a transposition of the baby’s
organic deficiencies into the Imaginary or as an intraimaginary comparison be-
tween the completeness of the specular image as perceived by the baby and the par-
tialvision that he necessarily has of his own body—indeed, one can never directly
look at one’s own body as a whole. This particular point of Lacan’s theory of the
mirror stage is usually overlooked, if not misunderstood: the “orthopedic” action
of the unity provided by the specular image of the body does notfollow a stage
in which the baby experiences his body as fragmented. The two imagoscan only
emerge together.^22 The baby recognizes the fragmentation of his real body only
when he starts to be attracted by the completeness of his specular image. The anx-
iety provoked by the experience of his real fragmentation accelerates the subject’s
alienating identification with the mirror image. But it is precisely in the psychicthe subject of the imaginary (other)