Mirror Stage - History of Development

History of Development

Lacan's concept of the mirror stage was strongly inspired by earlier work by psychologist Henri Wallon, who speculated based on observations of animals and humans responding to their reflections in mirrors. Wallon noted that by the age of about six months, human infants and chimpanzees both seem to recognize their reflection in a mirror. While chimpanzees rapidly lose interest in the discovery, human infants typically become very interested and devote much time and effort to exploring the connections between their bodies and their images. In a 1931 paper, Wallon argued that mirrors helped children develop a sense of self-identity. However, later mirror test research indicates that while toddlers are usually fascinated by mirrors, they do not recognize themselves in mirrors until the age of 15 months at the earliest, leading psychiatrist Norman N. Holland to declare that "there is no evidence whatsoever for Lacan's notion of a mirror stage." Similarly, Tallis notes that a literal interpretation of the Lacanian mirror stage contradicts empirical observations about human identity and personality: "the theory would predict that congenitally blind indiv­iduals would lack selfhood and be unable to enter language, society or the world at large. There is no evidence whatsoever that this implausible consequence of the theory is borne out in practice."

Wallon's ideas about mirrors in infant development were distinctly non-Freudian and little-known until revived in modified form a few years later by Lacan. As Evans writes, "Lacan used this observation as a springboard to develop an account of the development of human subjectivity that was inherently, though often implicitly, comparative in nature." Lacan attempted to link Wallon's ideas to Freudian psychoanalysis, but was met with indifference from the larger community of Freudian psychoanalysts. Richard Webster explains how the "complex, and at times impenetrable paper appears to have made little or no lasting impression on the psychoanalysts who first heard it. It was not mentioned in Ernest Jones’s brief account of the congress and received no public discussion."

In the 1930s, Lacan attended seminars by Alexandre Kojève, whose philosophy was heavily influenced by Hegel. The diachronic structure of the mirror stage theory is influenced by Kojève's interpretation of the Master-slave dialectic. Lacan continued to refine and modify the mirror stage concept through the remainder of his career; see below.

Evans argues that Lacan's earliest versions of the mirror stage, while flawed, can be regarded as a bold pioneering in the field of ethology (the study of animal behavior) and a precursor of both cognitive psychology and evolutionary psychology. In the 1930s, zoologists were increasingly interested in the then-new field of ethology, but not until the 1960s would the larger scientific community believe that animal behavior offered any insights into human behavior. However, Evans also notes that by the 1950s Lacan's mirror stage concept had become so abstract as to be untestable and therefore of no scientific value.