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Mirror Stage's Oversized Cultural Role
- Lacan's mirror stage is often treated as his signature idea, but it's more derivative and contested than cultural reception suggests.
- The essay's outsized influence shaped how many first encounter Lacan, often misleadingly.
Testing The Mirror With Twins
- Todd and Ryan put their twin boys in front of mirrored closet doors to provoke mirror reactions at six months.
- The hosts joke that exposing infants to mirrors didn't produce dramatic effects, but it became a family ritual.
Ego As Misrecognition Through The Mirror
- Lacan's core claim: the ego forms via a misrecognition when a fragmented embodied subject sees a coherent mirrored image.
- That imaginary identification creates an illusory sense of mastery despite bodily insufficiency.