Lacan's "The Mirror Stage"

Lacan’s psychoanalytical essay “The Mirror Stage” goes into Freud’s development of the concept of the Id. The baby though possibly unable to move it’s body much at all, is able to notice its reflection. I found this quite fascinating because if you put an animal in front of a mirror they do not have that same sense of self awareness that a baby has, who can’t move as much as say a dog. For example, “The child, at an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee is instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize as such his own image in a mirror” (Rivkin 441). With this recognition the baby becomes somewhat captivated by its own image. Lacan’s definition of the mirror stage was that it was not just an infant looking at his/her own reflection and that was it. The baby’s perspective on himself/herself becomes what he calls subjective or a human being’s personal perspective on a situation. In other words we all see ourselves in a particular light and are biased with by how we see ourselves. There is a relationship between the Ego and the Body and also what is imaginary and what is real for a child. For example, “Lacan describes his concept of the self as a delusory construct plagued in its very constitution by imaginary identifications with a spurious sense of wholeness or unity” (Rivkin 442).

The "Oedipus Complex" compared to "Hamlet"

Freud delved into this idea of children desiring the parent of the opposite sex for themselves and hating the parent of the same sex because they take away the parent of the opposite sex. His idea of this psychosexual attachment of a parent, which is taboo in most societies, was later named by Freud “The Oedipus Complex”, after the play Oedipus the King, which was written by Sophocles, one of the great ancient Greek tragedians. For example, “At the core of Freud’s sexual theory is the so-called “Oedipus Complex”, something Freud believed all children experience as a rite of passage to adult gender identity” (Rivkin 391). In order to cope with this desire which is not acceptable in society these children learn to repress these feelings and identify with the parent of the same sex. This action allows these feelings to remain in the unconscious and to overcome this desire. For example, “The male child learns to give up his initial ‘pre-Oedipal’ desire for and attachment to the mother; instead, he identifies with the father…and learns to desire other women than the mother” (Rivkin 391). This is displayed in Shakespeare’s story Hamlet which shows the protagonist struggle with his desire for his mother once his father has been murdered and his uncle has taken his Father's place with the mother. With Hamlet's Father's role being retaken, Hamlet must relive all over again the psychosexual feelings that he has repressed for his mother since a child. Hamlet’s expresses this "Oedipus Complex" struggle in the scene where he goes to visit his mother in her bedchamber. The intimate quarrel that appears between the two during this scene seems to trigger about Oedipus’s already disturbed repressed feelings.

Freud's "Second Self" compared to "The Mask"

In Rivkin’s “Intro: Strangers to ourselves” I found the development of psychoanalysis by Freud in his research of the unconscious interesting because his research challenged the idea of the human mind and how it is not chained to its natural instincts compared to animals. For example, “The ‘cogito’ or thinking self defines our humanity and our civility, our difference from animals chained to blind nature and uncontrollable instincts” (Rivkin 389). This idea of psychoanalysis was to access the inaccessible through different means and ways in which had never been approached or analyzed before in the human psyche. The areas that were now looked at were people’s dreams and their neurotic symptoms, which could express repressed thoughts or experiences. For example, “His discovery was that the human mind contains a dimension that is only partially accessible to consciousness and then only through indirect means such as dreams or neurotic symptoms” (Rivkin 389). Freud talks about these repressed feelings which create in a person a double self. We conform to society’s idea of what is appropriate behavior or thoughts and in doing so have two sides of ourselves which creates another area of ourselves in which we do not recognize. For example, “Repression is essential to civilization, the conversion of animal instinct into civil behavior, but such repression creates what might be called a second self, a stranger within, a place where all that cannot for one reason or another be expressed or realized in civil life takes up residence” (Rivkin 389). Freud’s idea of the double self that people create with their repressed thoughts and feelings that are natural or instinct driven and that are not acceptable in society I think relates to the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carey. In the movie the main character fits this idea of an acceptable citizen in society who acts and behaves appropriately. Until he finds this mask in which he uses as an outlet to act upon his hidden desires or impulses. This alternate side to him self is not held back by societies’ idea of appropriate behavior or morals but driven by natural instincts and impulses. He is more animalistic in a sense because he is driven by his instincts and desires and pursues them with full force.