3. Lacan’s Mirror Stage (3 of 4) : Ego as virtual construction

The idea of ’virtual reality’ can be applied to the psychoanalytic idea of the ego, which we can consider a virtual construction, or in Lacan’s own terms, a mirage, a gestalt, a means of engendering an imaginary sense of substantiality. If the ego takes a mirror image - or, the image of an other - as the basis of an imaginary identification, then the ego itself is always derivative, a secondary formation, locked into a love-hate relationship with the image that is both it’s underlying basis and its foremost rival. We revisit the famous “Mirror, mirror on the wall“ fairy tale scene to highlight this factor of libidinal ambivalence all the while stressing how the ego remains in a constant state of entanglement with others. Two other topics of interest are ’transitivism’ (a state of the over-extension of the boundaries of the ego) and the fact of the necessary mismatch between the imaginary mirror-image and the real of physical and psychic experience. Link to board: https