Lacan’s Mirror Stage

1.       A stage that occurs as a young child identifies with his own image (“ideal ego” or “ideal-I”).

2.       This act marks the primordial recognition of one’s self as “I” before entrance into language and the symbolic order.

3.       The Mirror stage establishes the “imaginary order” which still influences the subject even after the subject enters the symbolic order. The imaginary order is basically narcissism; the subject creates fantasy images of both himself and his ideal object of desire.

Ideas

1.       Strap a hero camera via head mount to a baby and record the baby’s day from his perspective. Go through the footage afterwards and look for objects the baby focused on. Possibly relate the video to fetishes to represent the imagery order that gets established in the Mirror stage.

2.       Record video of a baby in front of a mirror. Record his facial expressions, via actual face and the reflected image. Juxtapose both images together.

3.       Take baby toys and compare them with sexual toys. Ironically, many sexual toys are similar to baby’s toys, which suggest the imaginary order that gets establish. When babies are around certain objects in the mirror stage, for some unexplained reason later on life those objects somehow influence that same human’s fetishes through the imaginary.