Lacan's Mirror Stage Theory

Jacques Lacan's idea of the 'Mirror Stage' is a psychological development in which a child first recognizes itself in the mirror for the first time, and becomes conscious of it's image and self-hood. This stage is believed to occur between the age of 6 and 18 months of age, when the child first realizes it is individual from others. At this point the child begins to develop an identity that is distinct from others and yet, at the same time, inspired by and dependent on the images of others in order to achieve that image. It was from this theory that the idea of 'lack', and the concept of desire, arose. "Desire is a relation to being to lack, The lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It is not the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the being exists".

The foundation for the 'Mirror Stage' theory is built on Sigmund Freud's notion of the id and ego. During this stage, a child forms a sense of identity, and discovers a separate 'I' and 'other', by developing the ability to distinguish self from other; the child recognizes that they are unique and an individual, and not just a body reliant on others. This occurs before what is known as the linguistic stage of childhood, when a child's desires consist of basic human needs. This is reference to the 'Id' structure of Freud's theory of personality as the child has only the most basic and innate human desires. As the child begins development in the linguistic stage, it starts to use language and construct their identity, therefore the child's 'ego' begins to develop as it learns what is socially acceptable and forms morals. It is in this stage that the child subconsciously suffers an initial identity crisis, the sense of identity gives the child a foundation on which they are going to develop their personality. If this fundamental identification is not recognized, the child will resort to using external influences as examples to base their personality upon. Additionally, this will limit the child's ability to develop it's own ego, and therefore result in the child acting more to satisfy the needs of the id structure.

As an additional note, in relation to how we live our lives, Lacan theorizes that throughout our lives after our linguistic development, we will never be satisfied, due to the fact that ultimately we desire to return to the simplicity and convenience of life before we discover our identity, and that as we grow older, we become more comfortable as we come to the realization that what we want will not occur, and so the desire fades.