The Limits of Lacan’s Mirror Stage
In “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function,” Jacques Lacan introduces a philosophical conception of the subject into psychoanalysis. He primarily responds to Freud’s conception of the developed subject as an “ego” which serves as a broad referent for the subject’s constellation of raw, biological drives. He thinks the ego as such does not account for the transformation that occurs within the subject when developing an ego, and he deduces the mirror stage as a solution that he thinks even Freud ought to accept....