644
PARTISAN REVIEW
Hi s caprI ciou s insistence tha t psychoa na lys is must rema in un–
structured was already evident in hi s o rig ina l theoreti ca l contributi on
on th e
m irror im age
(1932), where he emphas izes th a t a child 's fi rs t
g limpse and apprehen sion of itself in th e mirro r (between six and
eighteen months) is o f fund amenta l psycho logica l impo rtan ce. T hi s
event is said to be th e child 's initi a l awa reness of himself as a bi ologica l
o rgani sm a t a time when he canno t yet verba lize o r ma ke sen se of thi s
experi ence.
The
mirror image
situates the agency of the ego, before its social
determin ati on , in a fi cti on al direction , whi ch will always remain
irredu cibl e for th e individua l a lone, or rather. whi ch will onl y rejoin
the coming inlO being of the subj ect asymp to ti ca ll y, wh atever the
success of Ih e di aleCli ca l syIllh eses by whi ch h e mllst resolve as
I
hi s
di scordance with his own rea lilY.
In
thi s fix ed and fl eeting " drama," th e individua l is said to a nti cipa te
himself bio logicall y, to be cognizant of bo th the " menta l permanence"
and the a li ena tion o f the
I,
to es tablish a rela tion between the
Innen–
welt
and the
Umwe lt.
Lacan sta tes th a t thi s fragment ed body image can
manifes t itself in ana lysa nds ' dreams, through aggress ive di sintegra–
ti o n of the indi vidual, o r in schizo id and spasmodi c sym p toms of
h ys teri a.
Although thi s expl an a tio n appea rs to rema in within the class ical
Freudi an tradition , the very no ti on tha t a p reorda ined event can be so
crucia l and yet so accidenta l seems to blur th e pa instakin g empi rical
studies of earl y childhood devel o pment by Ameri can Freudi a n s.
Their
use o f morphemes and phonemes, fo r instance, is likely
to
focus on
ma turationa l factors and varia ti ons , o r on the influ ence o f lan guage in
the resoluti on of the Oedipu s compl ex in a spec ifi c child . More
recentl y, Lacan' s mirroring has become less concrete- a pa rt of the
metapho ri cal discourse with the wo rld .
In
the 1949 versio n of the
mirror stage-the
first ch apter in the Eng lish
Ecrits-he
sta tes :
On the meIllal plane we find realized th e structures of fortifi ed
works , the metaphor of whi ch a rises spol1laneously, as if issuing
from the symptoms th emselves, to designale the mech ani sms of
obsessional neurosis-inversion , iso lation , redupli calion , can cell a–
ti on and displ acement.
With this insertion of lingui sti cs, Laca n " legitima tely" a ll ows hi s
imagin a tion to take over. The comp lexiti es multi p ly as he begins to
elabo ra te on the concept of the mirro r stage by zero ing
in
on the
