The specular body: Merleau-Ponty and Lacan on infant self and other

Abstract

It would appear to be an ordinary academic task to compare the views of Lacan and Merleau-Ponty on the mirror image. Both writers are intrinsically interesting, their views are original and worth the difficul ties one might experience in trying to understand them. Having said this, however, it is necessary to caution against the hope that one can introduce anything like a common terminology to rule the exercise of comparison and evaluation. Nothing of the sort exists for studies in child psychology, psychoanalysis or phenomenology. We are, therefore, obliged to 'misread' (Bloom, 1973) our authors as responsibly as we can. There seems to be no general usage in the literature for the concept of body image or of the uses of the mirror image. Seymour Fisher (1970) and Fisher and Cleveland (1968) virtually ignore phenomenological and psychoanalytical usage in their vast series of quantitative psychological studies. Fisher (1970), Gorman (1969) and Shontz (1969) make reference to Schilder (1950), as does Merleau Ponty (1962). But neither Merleau-Ponty nor Lacan find any important place in the literature. The phenomenological and psychoanalytical interpretation of the body image and the mirror stage, although itself not ignorant of experimental literature, seems to fall outside of con temporary experimental psychology. Lacan's stade du miroir (1949, 1977) involves a revised psychoanalytical reading of psychological and biological data concerning the infant period from six to eighteen months. Of course, at the time Freud was hardly available to French readers and so we must realize that to a large extent we are dealing with Lacan's retrospective revisionism. But in view of the multiple dis courses involved, and the casual practices of cross reference, nothing is to be gained from trying to coordinate concepts and theory. This is, to be sure, a venerable academic exercise (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973) but it misses the life of science. In practice, each theorist is likely to try to win over everyone to his distinctive discourse rather than try to subordinate himself to a lingua franca. Beyond that, the normal scientists will generally stay behind their chosen leader, defending, patching and repairing his usage.