S. Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychologi-
cal Work of Sigmund Freud[henceforth SE], volume XIV (London: Hogarth Press and the In-
stitute of Psychoanalysis, 2001 ).
Écrits,pp. 88 , 188.
D. Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis(London: Routledge, 199 6), p. 20.
Écrits: A Selection,p. 21 (emphasis added).
“The mirror stage is not simply a moment in development. It also has an exemplary func-
tion, because it reveals some of the subject’s relations to his image, in so far as it is the
Urbildof the ego” (The Seminar. Book I,p. 74 ). Laplanche and Pontalis have attempted to
clarify whether the mirror stage is better understood as a “stage” (stade) or as a “phase”
(phase): “As Lacan has indicated himself, the word ‘phase’ [phase] is no doubt better
adapted here than ‘stage’ [stade], in that it suggests a turning-point rather than a period
in the process of psycho-biological maturation” (J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Lan-
guage of Psychoanalysis[London: Karnac Books, 1988 ], p. 252 ). This is stated by Lacan in
“Propos sur la causalité psychique” (19 4 6) (in Écrits,p. 184 ). The problem is that twenty
years later, in “Des nos antécédents” (19 6 6) (ibid., p. 69 ), he declares the exact oppo-
site: “[We have] incessantly kept on recalling in [psychoanalytic] practice a moment
which is not of [infantile] history, a moment of configurative insight,and so we designate
it as a stage [stade] even though it emerges in a phase [phase].” Despite terminological con-
fusion, the argument remains sufficiently clear: the mirror stage does indeed emerge at
a specific moment in the child’s psychosexual development, but it cannot be confined to
infantile history since it constitutes the subject’s permanent imaginary structure.
The mirror stage was originally formulated by H. Wallon in his studies on the develop-
ment of self-awareness in children (Wallon’s key text on this topic is Les origines du carac-
tère chez l’enfant[Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 19 49]); on Lacan’s failure openly
to acknowledge his debt, see M. Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan: The Absolute Master(Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 1991 ), pp.248‒249. On the other hand, Lacan often mentions
Bühler’s experiments on child transitivism (see, for example, Écrits: A Selection,p. 5 ; Écrits,
p.18 0) as he also repeatedly defends his arguments by referring to Harrison’s etholog-
ical experiments with pigeons: these demonstrate that “the animal’s sight of its own im-
age in a mirror is sufficient to unleash ovulation” (ibid., pp.189‒190). Lacan also refers
to the work of other ethologists such as Köhler (on chimpanzees) and Chauvin (on
grasshoppers).
R. Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy,” in Key Philosophical Writings(Ware: Words-
worth, 1997 ), p.13 5.
12 .Écrits,p.17 0.
See The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book II, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis,
1954–1955(New York: Norton, 1991 ), especially p. 241.
“The ego really is an object” (ibid., p. 49 ).
“In the functioning of pairing mechanisms, ethologists have proved the dominance of
the image, which appears in the guise of a transitory phenotype through the modifica-
tion of the external appearance and whose manifestation serves as a signal, of a con-
structed signal, that is to say a Gestaltwhich sets the reproductive behaviour in motion.”
(The Seminar. Book I,p. 122 ; see also p.13 8.)
Ibid., p.13 8.