In Lacan’s piece “The Mirror Stage as a Formative Function of the I”, he discusses what he refers to as the “mirror stage” in which an infant sees his or her image in a mirror and how this image relates to the child’s concept of “self”. Lacan challenges the Descartian idea: “I think, therefore I am”. He proposes instead that when an infant reaches 6-18 months of age, there is an instance where he or she realizes that the person staring back at them in the mirror is in fact his or herself. Lacan refers to this as the “Ideal-I” because it is an unadulterated sense of self. This pre-lingual image is not tainted with language or social constructs.

However, Lacan refers to this image as “fictional”. This is because this self that we establish as infants is in fact just an image in a mirror. It has no reflection of the other things that make up the self such as things that exist in our unconscious. This made me think of the concept of a life story which is something we have recently discussed in my personality psychology class. The life story is an internalized, evolving cognitive structure or script that we tell about our selves that gives our life meaning and helps us have a sense of identity. This story is not necessarily 100% fact. It is based on our skewed perspectives of all the things we have experienced. In this way, our life story could be considered fictional and so the image of our self, or our “Ideal-I” from the very beginning, becomes the protagonist of our life story.

Interestingly enough, Lacan also points out that this image infants see in the mirror does not entirely reflect who they are—the image seems whole and complete while they seem to be fragmented in the way that they are unable to control their limbs and hold themselves up properly. And so, the infant will strive to match the image they perceived in the mirror and this continues throughout his or her life even though this image is in fact a fantasy. This misrecognition (and the joke from the novel that Prof. Allred shared with the class) reminds me of the way bloggers on tumblr (a social blogging website) or other social networking sites will reblog/post an image (a screenshot from a movie/show, meme, etc) and tag it: #me, #about me, #gpoy (gratuitous picture of yourself), etc. That’s not to say that the image of an incompetent Patrick from Spongebob with a wooden board nailed to his head ( a silly but real example) is an actual photograph of themselves but that it reflects one aspect of their “self” as does the image in a mirror.