Precis/ The Mirror Stage

Lacan writes in his "The Mirror Stage" that we are first conscious of our perceptions when we (as infants) see our reflections in the mirror. This is a distorted image, however, an imago, which the OED defines as an "idealized mental picture of oneself." Lacan often brings up matters of "spatiality" and anatomical "incompleteness" that lead to a fragmented notion of oneself (4). From this incomplete/fragmented perception, and this notion of meconnaissance (an "illusion of autonomy"), the Ego emerges (6). He discusses the "secondariness" of the "I"--how it is secondary to false recognition of oneself (the meconnaissance) and that it provides the "most extensive definition of neurosis" (7).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaques_Lacan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage http://science.jrank.org/pages/11347/Structuralism-Poststructuralism-Jacques-Lacan-Michel-Foucault-Gilles-Deleuze.html