Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Jacques Lacan 137
instinctive drive), ego (the rational self), and superego (the moral/ethical drive) to construct a
theory of the decentered subject—a subject that identifies itself as Other and in relation to that
which it is not. This initial identification is what Lacan calls the “mirror stage” and is one that we
will discuss in detail later. Equally important, Lacan grounds his work in structural linguistics.
He believes that we identify our selves only as we come to accept and understand the rules of our
primary language. In a basic sense, Lacan believes that language, as a structure that precedes our
bodily existence, defines us; this is the crux of structural linguistics.
LACAN AND IDENTITY FORMATION
In 1936, Lacan published an article entitled, “On the Mirror Stage as Formative of the I.” It
received little attention until its re-publication in 1949, and since then it has become one of his
most widely discussed theories. To explain this theory, we need to begin with a visual image.
Picture an infant, between the ages of 6 and 18 months, sitting in front of a mirror. With the
infant, there is a parental figure. At some point, the infant comes to realize that the baby in the
mirror is herself or himself. The moment at which the infant identifies the image in the mirror as
herself or himself is crucial, according to Lacan. But it is significant not only because the child
recognizes herself or himself, but because it is at this point that the child “Others” or decenters
herself or himself. In a sense, the child sees herself or himself as outside of its actual body.
At this moment, the child also understands herself or himself as a whole being, one that can
then be called an “I.” This “I” or ego, from the moment of identification in the mirror, is a
projected identity—a reflected “I.” Lacan argues that this projected identity is artificial because
it gives the illusion of a unified subject or self. Where and how the child is positioned in relation
to others in the mirror is also important. The child, upon recognition of herself or himself in the
mirror, simultaneously perceives of herself or himself in relation to others. Whoever is in the
mirror with the child becomes an immediate object of comparison. The child begins to determine
how she or he is or is not like the other object in the mirror. The important point here is that very
young children develop a concept of the self in relation to others and this category of “others”
includes the child’s image of itself in the mirror. And because this image is unified/whole, the
child begins to think of herself or himself as a singular and coherent “I.”
Perhaps what makes Lacan’s mirror concept so intriguing is his implication that a child’s
learning to identify herself or himself as an “I” does not begin as an internal understanding.
Instead, Lacan argues, the child must first recognize herself or himself externally (in the mirror)
before she or he can construct an internal identity. In this way, the child’s identity is decentered—it
identifies first as an external observation. To put it more simply, the child is first an “Other” to
herself or himself. Only when the child recognizes itself in the mirror can she or he internally
claim to be an “I.” If the child had been able to identify as an “I” without recognizing herself
or himself in the mirror, then the child’s identity would be centered. Lacan, however, believes
such an internal identification is impossible without the mirror stage. Thus, the identity of the self
always begins as decentered—as the child recognizing itself as an “I” only through a projected
image.
When the child comes to understand that the image in the mirror is herself or himself and a
reflection, identical to yet not the same as herself or himself, then the child becomes a subject. As
a subject, the child is a social being and thus more than the sum of its biological parts. She or he
creates the reflection in the mirror and constructs the self that is the reflection. How strange is that?
My body creates the reflection of the object in the mirror, but it is only when I understand that the
reflection is me that I can identify as a self. At the moment the child understands this paradox,
she or he enters the world as a subject, one who affects the world as she or he is simultaneously
defined by it. It is this question of subjectivity that compels Lacan to further investigate language