Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst (1901-1981) is known to have articulated the mirror stage, as a foundational moment in a toddler’s developmental journey. 

The moment in which a toddler identifies themselves in the mirror and gains a sense of unity; “from insufficiency to anticipation”

This is a self, which is also a fallacy. As life progresses and psychological development ensue the self will realize the multidimensionality of the self, the fragmentation.

This is in line with the journey between the self heuristic and the identity heuristic. The self is fragmented, and maybe chaotic – while the self is untied, falsely so. 

Moreover, Lacan’s Mirror Stage needn’t be an actual physical mirror, and might be the gaze of the toddler’s mother, where the toddler recognizes that the mother is *gazing at* something, someone.

In our inquiry of the psychology of creativity, it is tempting to say any cycle of reinvention, a transformative gesture, will allow the individual to “repackage the self”. Redefine and reassess how might they show up in the world. 

How does the ‘Who am I’ formulate the ‘What am I?’ 

What do you see when you look in the mirror? the identity, or the self?

Thank you for reading.
Nitzan H.