At the age 6-18 months child looks at the mirror and recognizes him/herself. The image in the mirror is looking at her, she is looking at the image. It's something else! Until now everything was me. There was nothing except of me. What is this image?! There's something outside of me! I don't like it. Child doesn't like it. He desperately wants to stop this trauma, heal this shock, get rid of it. Until now there was no division between her mouth, vagina, anal, mother's breast, mother's gaze. Everything was one. Now he recognizes the image of himself, realizes that there is something distant, something which he is not, the other.

What do you do? You decide to stop it, you scream, cry, you want to be that image, you want to own it. You are looking at that image and it says: "This is you." Your mother is another self, but you find yourself in her, reflected, you adopt her image as yours. Child develops the imagination as the protest against the loss of the unity, against the lack of the oneness. There is the child's self and the environment. The image child sees becomes the illusion of herself, the child adopts the image of herself as herself and enters the inescapable illusion.

It's as simple as it is. I look at the image in front of me, project my desires into it and assimilate it as myself. Friend tells me: "That's interesting," and i feel smart. Friend tells me: "I like your shirt," and i feel like i have a good taste. Boss tells me: "You did a good job," and i feel useful. Lover tells me: "I love you," and i feel unique. We desperately need the image to confirm ourselves.

Icons. Stars. Celebrities. Favourites. I keep finding myself in them. I identify myself with these images. They represent myself because they satisfy my idea about myself.

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-81) calls this traumatic event the Mirror Stage and the state of identification with the image the Imaginary Order. He says we enter it in the very childhood and it stays with us until our very death.











more: http://dusan.satori.sk/lacan/