Abstract: In his article Michael Billing shows that Lacan made the distinction between “mirror stage” facts and his own
theoretical interpretation of those obvious facts. Billing focuses on facts. According to the author, when facts generate
doubts, theoretical interpretation of these facts becomes weak, too. This is quite a typical approach in psychology.
Psychological ideas must be based on observations of human actions and should not be based on pure theory. However,
Lacan was rather critical about that approach. He started his theory about the splitting of the ego feeling quite confident
that was what a child actually did in front of the mirror. In other words, Lacan’s theory about the “ideal reflection” is based on Lacan’t confidence that his interpretation of observed actions were absolutely correct. At the same time, Lacan
did not provide any evidence of the mirror reflection giving to a child his idea image. Lacan’s beliefs are not convincing
and neither is his statement about what is actually going on in a child’s mind when he sees his reflection in the mirror.
Michael Billing establishes that today many cultural theorists use Lacan’s conception so that their reasoning, at its best,
becomes purely metaphorical or, at its worst, has no evident retain to actual human behavior.
Michael Billing proves that Lacan’s concept of the relation between language and unconsciousness had an overly general
nature and therefore does not help us to understand what people say and what they do when they say it.
Moreover, the author provides proof that Lacan’s reputation does not allow to develop the critics of his theory even
despite the fact that Lacan’s theory has more unclear provisions than clear ones.
Keywords: psychology, Lacan, unconsciousness, mirror stage, language, reflection, Ego, Self, estrangement, child.
Contact information: Konyaev Sergey Nikolaevich, 119991, Russia, Moscow, ul. Vokhonka 14/1, bld. 5, room 406.
References:
Asendorpf, J.B., V. Warkentin and P.M. Baudonniere (1996) ‘Self-awareness and Other-awareness.
Mirror Self-recognition, Social Contingency Awareness, and Synchronic Imitation’, Developmental Psychology 32: 313–21. 2. Ash, M.G. (1998) Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890–1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baldwin, J.M. (1895) Mental Development in the Individual and Race. London: Macmillan.
Baldwin, J.M. (1897) Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Study in Social Psychology. London: Macmillan.
Baldwin, J.M. (1930) ‘Autobiography of James Mark Baldwin’, in C. Murchison (ed.) History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol. 1. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Barthes, R. (1995) Roland Barthes. London: Papermac.
Bazerman, C. (1988) Shaping Written Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Billig, M. (1994) ‘Repopulating the Depopulated Pages of Social Psychology’, Theory & Psychology 4: 307–35.
Billig, M. (1997) ‘From Codes to Utterances: Cultural Studies, Discourse and Psychology’, in P. Golding and M. Ferguson (eds) Beyond Cultural Studies. London: Sage.
Billig, M. (1999) Freudian Repression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Billig, M. (2005) Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage.
Bowie, M. (1991) Lacan. London: Fontana.
Brennan, T. (1993) History after Lacan. London: Routledge.
Bühler, C. (1935) From Birth to Maturity. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bühler, C. (1940) The Child and his Family. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Buscombe, E., C. Gledhill, A. Lovell and C. Williams (1992) ‘Psychoanalysis and Film’, in The Sexual Subject: A ‘Screen’ Reader in Sexuality. London: Routledge.
Billig – Lacan’s Misuse of Psychology 23.
Darwin, C. (1877) ‘A Biographical Sketch of an Infant’, Mind 2: 285–94.
de Veer, M.W., G.G. Gallup, L.A. Theall, R. van den Bos and D.J. Povinelli (2003) ‘An 8-year Longitudinal Study of Mirror Self-recognition in Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes)’, Neuropsychologia 41: 229–34.
Forrester, J. (1991) The Seductions of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forrester, J. (1997) ‘Lacan’s Debt to Freud: How the Ratman Paid Off his Debt’, in T. Dufresne (ed.) Returns of the ‘French Freud’: Freud, Lacan and Beyond. New York: Routledge.
Forrester, M. (2002) Psychology of the Image. London: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1900/1991) The Interpretation of Dreams, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 4. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1901/1975) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 5. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1905/1991) Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 6. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1914/1986) ‘On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement’, in Historical and Expository Works on Psychoanalysis, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 15. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1915/1991) ‘The Unconscious’, in On Metapsychology, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 11. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1985) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, ed. by J.M. Masson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Frosh, S. (1997) For and Against Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.
Gallese, V. and A. Goldman (1998) ‘Mirror Neurons and the Simulation Theory of Mind-reading’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2: 493–501.
Gallup, G.G. and S.D. Suarez (1991) ‘Social Responding to Mirrors in Rhesusmonkeys (Macaca-mulatta) – Effects of Temporary Mirror Removal’, Journal of Comparative Psychology 105: 376–9.
Gallup, G.G., J.R. Anderson and D.J. Shillito (2002) ‘The Mirror Test’, in M. Bekoff, C. Allen and G.M. Burghardt (eds) The Cognitive Animal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gallup, G.G., D.J. Povinelli, S.D. Suarez, J.R. Anderson, J. Lethmate and E.W. Menzel (1995) ‘Further Reflections on Self-recognition in Primates’, Animal Behaviour 50: 1525–32.
Gilbert, G.N. and M. Mulkay (1984) Opening Pandora’s Box. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grosz, E. (1990) Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. London: Routledge.
Guillaume, P. (1926/1971) Imitation in Children. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Heath, S. (1992) ‘Difference’, in The Sexual Subject: a ‘Screen’ Reader in Sexuality. London: Routledge.
Horley, J. (2001) ‘After “the Baltimore Affair”: James Mark Baldwin’s Life and Work, 1908–1934’, History of Psychology 4: 24–33.
Humm, M. (1997) Feminism and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Keenan, J.P., G.G. Gallup and D. Falk (2003) The Face in the Mirror. New York: Ecco. 24 Theory, Culture & Society 23(4).
Koffka, K. (1928) The Growth of the Mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Köhler, E. (1926) Die Persönlichkeit des Dreijährigen Kindes. Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel.
Köhler, W. (1925/1973) The Mentality of Apes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Köhler, W. (1929) Gestalt Psychology. New York: Horace Liveright.
Kulick, D. (2005) ‘The Importance of What Gets Left Out’, Discourse Studies 7: 615–24.
Lacan, J. (1966) Écrits. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Lacan, J. (1977a) Écrits: A Selection. London: Tavistock.
Lacan, J. (1977b) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Lacan, J. (1988) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 1, Freud’s Papers on Technique 1953–1954. New York: W.W. Norton.
Lacan, J. (1993) The Psychoses. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III. London: Routledge.
McCloskey, D.N. (1986) The Rhetoric of Economics. Brighton: Harvester.
MacKinnon, K. (2001) ‘Curiously, Fetishism can be Fun’, Film-Philosophy 5(4).
Marten, K. and S. Psarakos (1995) ‘Using Self-view Television to Distinguish between Self-examination and Social Behaviour in the Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus)’, Consciousness and Cognition 4: 205–24.
Mitchell, R.W. (1997) ‘Kinesthetic-visual Matching and the Self-concept as Explanations of Mirror-self-recognition’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 27: 17–39.
Morss, J. (1997) Growing Critical: Alternatives to Developmental Psychology. London: Routledge.
Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16: 6–18.
Nelson, J.S., A. Megill and D.N. McCloskey (eds) (1987) The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Parker, I. (2003) ‘Jacques Lacan, Barred Psychologist’, Theory & Psychology 13: 95–115.
Parker, I. (2005) ‘Lacanian Discourse Analysis in Psychology: Seven Theoretical Elements’, Theory & Psychology 15: 163–82.
Povinelli, D.J., G.G. Gallup, T.J. Eddy, D.T. Bierschwale, M.C. Engstrom, H.K. Perilloux et al. (1997) ‘Chimpanzees Recognize Themselves in Mirrors’, Animal Behaviour 53: 1083–8.
Preyer, W. (1889) The Mind of the Child, Part II: The Development of the Intellect. New York: D. Appleton.
Reiss, D. and L. Marino (2001) ‘Mirror Self-recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin: A Case of Cognitive Convergence’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 5937–42.
Richards, G. (2002) Putting Psychology in its Place: A Critical Historical Overview. London: Routledge.
Rizzolatti, G. and L. Craighero (2004) ‘The Mirror-neuron System’, Annual Review of Neuroscience 27: 167–92.
Roudinesco, E. (1990) Jacques Lacan and Co. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Roudinesco, E. (1997) Jacques Lacan. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shillito, D.J., G.G. Gallup and B.B. Beck (1999) ‘Factors Affecting Mirror Behaviour in Western Lowland Gorillas, Gorilla Gorilla’, Animal Behaviour 57: 999–1004.
Stacey, J. (1999) ‘Desperately Seeking Difference’, in J. Evans and S. Hall (eds) Visual Culture. London: Sage.
Stamenov, M.I. and V. Gallese (eds) (2002) Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999) Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge.
Sully, J. (1895) Studies of Childhood. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Urwin, C. (1986) ‘Developmental Psychology and Psychoanalysis: Splitting the Difference’, in M. Richards and P. Light (eds) Children of Social Worlds. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Vyt, A. (2001) ‘Processes of Visual Self-recognition in Infants: Experimental Induction of “Mirror” Experience via Video Self-image Presentation’, Infant and Child Development 10: 173–87.
Walkerdine, V. (1988) The Mastery of Reason. London: Routledge.
Wallon, H. (1934/1949) Les origines du caractère chez l’enfant Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Wilden, A. (1981) ‘Lacan and the Discourse of the Other’, in J. Lacan Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. with notes and commentary by A. Wilden. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Žižek, S. (1999) ‘The Undergrowth of Enjoyment: How Popular Culture Can Serve as an Introduction to Lacan’, in E. Wright and E. Wright (eds) The Žižek Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Žižek, S. (2001) Enjoy your Symptoms!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. London: Routled
References (transliteration):
Asendorpf, J.B., V. Warkentin and P.M. Baudonniere (1996) ‘Self-awareness and Other-awareness.
Mirror Self-recognition, Social Contingency Awareness, and Synchronic Imitation’, Developmental Psychology 32: 313–21. 2. Ash, M.G. (1998) Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890–1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baldwin, J.M. (1895) Mental Development in the Individual and Race. London: Macmillan.
Baldwin, J.M. (1897) Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Study in Social Psychology. London: Macmillan.
Baldwin, J.M. (1930) ‘Autobiography of James Mark Baldwin’, in C. Murchison (ed.) History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol. 1. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Barthes, R. (1995) Roland Barthes. London: Papermac.
Bazerman, C. (1988) Shaping Written Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Billig, M. (1994) ‘Repopulating the Depopulated Pages of Social Psychology’, Theory & Psychology 4: 307–35.
Billig, M. (1997) ‘From Codes to Utterances: Cultural Studies, Discourse and Psychology’, in P. Golding and M. Ferguson (eds) Beyond Cultural Studies. London: Sage.
Billig, M. (1999) Freudian Repression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Billig, M. (2005) Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage.
Bowie, M. (1991) Lacan. London: Fontana.
Brennan, T. (1993) History after Lacan. London: Routledge.
Bühler, C. (1935) From Birth to Maturity. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bühler, C. (1940) The Child and his Family. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Buscombe, E., C. Gledhill, A. Lovell and C. Williams (1992) ‘Psychoanalysis and Film’, in The Sexual Subject: A ‘Screen’ Reader in Sexuality. London: Routledge.
Billig – Lacan’s Misuse of Psychology 23.
Darwin, C. (1877) ‘A Biographical Sketch of an Infant’, Mind 2: 285–94.
de Veer, M.W., G.G. Gallup, L.A. Theall, R. van den Bos and D.J. Povinelli (2003) ‘An 8-year Longitudinal Study of Mirror Self-recognition in Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes)’, Neuropsychologia 41: 229–34.
Forrester, J. (1991) The Seductions of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forrester, J. (1997) ‘Lacan’s Debt to Freud: How the Ratman Paid Off his Debt’, in T. Dufresne (ed.) Returns of the ‘French Freud’: Freud, Lacan and Beyond. New York: Routledge.
Forrester, M. (2002) Psychology of the Image. London: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1900/1991) The Interpretation of Dreams, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 4. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1901/1975) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 5. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1905/1991) Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 6. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1914/1986) ‘On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement’, in Historical and Expository Works on Psychoanalysis, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 15. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1915/1991) ‘The Unconscious’, in On Metapsychology, Penguin Freud Library, vol. 11. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freud, S. (1985) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, ed. by J.M. Masson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Frosh, S. (1997) For and Against Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.
Gallese, V. and A. Goldman (1998) ‘Mirror Neurons and the Simulation Theory of Mind-reading’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2: 493–501.
Gallup, G.G. and S.D. Suarez (1991) ‘Social Responding to Mirrors in Rhesusmonkeys (Macaca-mulatta) – Effects of Temporary Mirror Removal’, Journal of Comparative Psychology 105: 376–9.
Gallup, G.G., J.R. Anderson and D.J. Shillito (2002) ‘The Mirror Test’, in M. Bekoff, C. Allen and G.M. Burghardt (eds) The Cognitive Animal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gallup, G.G., D.J. Povinelli, S.D. Suarez, J.R. Anderson, J. Lethmate and E.W. Menzel (1995) ‘Further Reflections on Self-recognition in Primates’, Animal Behaviour 50: 1525–32.
Gilbert, G.N. and M. Mulkay (1984) Opening Pandora’s Box. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grosz, E. (1990) Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. London: Routledge.
Guillaume, P. (1926/1971) Imitation in Children. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Heath, S. (1992) ‘Difference’, in The Sexual Subject: a ‘Screen’ Reader in Sexuality. London: Routledge.
Horley, J. (2001) ‘After “the Baltimore Affair”: James Mark Baldwin’s Life and Work, 1908–1934’, History of Psychology 4: 24–33.
Humm, M. (1997) Feminism and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Keenan, J.P., G.G. Gallup and D. Falk (2003) The Face in the Mirror. New York: Ecco. 24 Theory, Culture & Society 23(4).
Koffka, K. (1928) The Growth of the Mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.
Köhler, E. (1926) Die Persönlichkeit des Dreijährigen Kindes. Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel.
Köhler, W. (1925/1973) The Mentality of Apes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Köhler, W. (1929) Gestalt Psychology. New York: Horace Liveright.
Kulick, D. (2005) ‘The Importance of What Gets Left Out’, Discourse Studies 7: 615–24.
Lacan, J. (1966) Écrits. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Lacan, J. (1977a) Écrits: A Selection. London: Tavistock.
Lacan, J. (1977b) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Lacan, J. (1988) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book 1, Freud’s Papers on Technique 1953–1954. New York: W.W. Norton.
Lacan, J. (1993) The Psychoses. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III. London: Routledge.
McCloskey, D.N. (1986) The Rhetoric of Economics. Brighton: Harvester.
MacKinnon, K. (2001) ‘Curiously, Fetishism can be Fun’, Film-Philosophy 5(4).
Marten, K. and S. Psarakos (1995) ‘Using Self-view Television to Distinguish between Self-examination and Social Behaviour in the Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops Truncatus)’, Consciousness and Cognition 4: 205–24.
Mitchell, R.W. (1997) ‘Kinesthetic-visual Matching and the Self-concept as Explanations of Mirror-self-recognition’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 27: 17–39.
Morss, J. (1997) Growing Critical: Alternatives to Developmental Psychology. London: Routledge.
Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16: 6–18.
Nelson, J.S., A. Megill and D.N. McCloskey (eds) (1987) The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Parker, I. (2003) ‘Jacques Lacan, Barred Psychologist’, Theory & Psychology 13: 95–115.
Parker, I. (2005) ‘Lacanian Discourse Analysis in Psychology: Seven Theoretical Elements’, Theory & Psychology 15: 163–82.
Povinelli, D.J., G.G. Gallup, T.J. Eddy, D.T. Bierschwale, M.C. Engstrom, H.K. Perilloux et al. (1997) ‘Chimpanzees Recognize Themselves in Mirrors’, Animal Behaviour 53: 1083–8.
Preyer, W. (1889) The Mind of the Child, Part II: The Development of the Intellect. New York: D. Appleton.
Reiss, D. and L. Marino (2001) ‘Mirror Self-recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin: A Case of Cognitive Convergence’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 5937–42.
Richards, G. (2002) Putting Psychology in its Place: A Critical Historical Overview. London: Routledge.
Rizzolatti, G. and L. Craighero (2004) ‘The Mirror-neuron System’, Annual Review of Neuroscience 27: 167–92.
Roudinesco, E. (1990) Jacques Lacan and Co. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Roudinesco, E. (1997) Jacques Lacan. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shillito, D.J., G.G. Gallup and B.B. Beck (1999) ‘Factors Affecting Mirror Behaviour in Western Lowland Gorillas, Gorilla Gorilla’, Animal Behaviour 57: 999–1004.
Stacey, J. (1999) ‘Desperately Seeking Difference’, in J. Evans and S. Hall (eds) Visual Culture. London: Sage.
Stamenov, M.I. and V. Gallese (eds) (2002) Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999) Lacan and the Political. London: Routledge.
Sully, J. (1895) Studies of Childhood. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Urwin, C. (1986) ‘Developmental Psychology and Psychoanalysis: Splitting the Difference’, in M. Richards and P. Light (eds) Children of Social Worlds. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Vyt, A. (2001) ‘Processes of Visual Self-recognition in Infants: Experimental Induction of “Mirror” Experience via Video Self-image Presentation’, Infant and Child Development 10: 173–87.
Walkerdine, V. (1988) The Mastery of Reason. London: Routledge.
Wallon, H. (1934/1949) Les origines du caractère chez l’enfant Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Wilden, A. (1981) ‘Lacan and the Discourse of the Other’, in J. Lacan Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. with notes and commentary by A. Wilden. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Žižek, S. (1999) ‘The Undergrowth of Enjoyment: How Popular Culture Can Serve as an Introduction to Lacan’, in E. Wright and E. Wright (eds) The Žižek Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Žižek, S. (2001) Enjoy your Symptoms!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. London: Routled
Eng
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