1. Lacan’s Mirror Stage (1 of 4) - Challenges of ’Prematuration’

The human infant, for Lacan, is unprepared for life at birth. This infant face a series of challenges, such as gaining an integrated sense of their body and of their ego (their ’I’). A crucial factor in such tasks of ’separation individuation’ is an image, an externalized ’map’ of the body that the subject can use as the basis of their emerging ego. This mini-lecture foregrounds a series of themes - anticipatory temporality, the idea of primordial discord, psychotic difficulties in differentiating ego and world - underlying the need for ’a psychical action’ such as the mirror stage. I refer to Freud’s ’On Narcissism’ and Lacan’s ’The Mirror Stage’ essays. Link to board :