The mirror stage is a concept in psychoanalytic theory describing a developmental moment, typically occurring between six and eighteen months of age, in which an infant first recognizes its own reflection in a mirror as a unified image of itself. The concept was developed by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who argued that this recognition creates an idealized, coherent sense of a bodily self that contrasts with the infant's actual experience of physical uncoordination, founding an enduring gap between the imagined unified self and lived experience. Lacan considered the mirror stage a formative moment in the development of the ego and of a person's sense of identity.
Facts
Classification
Type of Phenomenon First Described Year Sources
1. Wikipedia: Mirror stage
Wikimedia FoundationArticle text
Initially, Lacan proposed that the mirror stage was part of an infant's development from 6 to 18 months, as outlined at the Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at Marienbad in 1936.
lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
The mirror stage is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception (the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside themselves) from the age of about six months.
In Group: Early Childhood Cognitive Concepts, Lead
The mirror stage is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception (the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside themselves) from the age of about six months.
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