Lacan’s mirror stage, discussion of pigeon gonads, and ideas about the fakeness of mirror images all direct us to the major point that, though we need self-identification in order to function in the world, we will never really reach the ideal-I that our mirror image projects. To be human is to be dehiscent, and this is physically obvious when looking at 8-16 month olds with the mismatch between their executive functioning and their erratic and miscalculated behavior, and how their identification with their mirror image represents a cohesive, neat ideal-I who looks way more put together than the baby himself. This sticks with us throughout our lives, and one way we can see it is from an emotional perspective. Navigating our emotions and thoughts can be just as erratic and incohesive a mess as the baby’s physical navigation, but our mirror image does not reflect any of this confusion. Nor does it reflect any illness we may have, a headache we feel, and it has no way of reflecting back the fight we had with someone earlier in the day–we just see a contained, put-together, ideal self. This is why the image that the child sees in the mirror the first time they look at themselves is not real. 

I’ve been reading a book recently titled Talking to Strangers by Malcolmn Gladwell, and Lacan’s essay reminded me about a point Gladwell makes that one reason we don’t really know how to talk to strangers is because we assume we can tell everything about them from their outward appearance. The book brings up the Amanda Knox case, where Knox was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a murder she didn’t commit. There was basically no hard evidence against her–no fingerprints, no DNA, and nothing to tie her to the scene itself, but what convinced everyone of her guilt was her odd demeanor about her friend’s death. The crime scene investigators said she did a twirl and said “ta-da” when she let them into the apartment where the murder had happened, and this wasn’t seen as an appropriate response. True, maybe it wasn’t, but the awkward personality mismatch between Knox’s outward appearance versus inward feelings is what sent her to jail rather than any concrete evidence. I think this is similar to the mirror stage that Lacan talks about, just maybe on a less theoretical level. We are so messy in so many ways, but want to be interpreted as a neat and cohesive package. And often because of mental heuristics in combination with high stakes situations, we often are taken as our mirror image when we shouldn’t be, which clearly can be really unfortunate (I guess we are our own undoing, which also reminds me of how the plot of Billy Budd and the idea of a “crucifiction” totally undoes itself in Johnson’s reading, but I won’t ramble on!)

Freud’s essay “Fetishism” delves into the psychoanalytic understanding of fetishism as a psychological phenomenon, particularly within the context of sexuality and desire. Freud’s exploration of fetishism offers insights into the complexities of human sexuality and the unconscious mind. At the heart of Freud’s analysis is the concept of the fetish as a substitute object that serves to displace and conceal underlying anxieties and desires. He argues that fetishism arises from a conflict between unconscious impulses and social norms, particularly around sexuality and the body. Freud proposes that fetishism emerges as a defense mechanism against castration anxiety, a primal fear experienced by young boys upon realizing their perceived lack of a penis compared to adult males. “An investigation of fetishism is strongly recommended to anyone who still doubts the existence of the castration complex or who can still believe that fright at the sight of the female genital has some other ground—for instance, that it is derived from a supposed recollection of the trauma of birth” (Pg. 818). In response to this anxiety, individuals may develop fetishes as a way to mitigate feelings of inadequacy and to preserve a sense of mastery and control over their desires. Furthermore, Freud explores the role of fetishism in mediating the relationship between desire and prohibition. He suggests that the fetish object serves as a compromise formation, allowing individuals to simultaneously satisfy and disavow forbidden desires within socially acceptable boundaries. “It also saves the fetishist from becoming a homosexual, by endowing women with the characteristic which makes them tolerable as sexual objects.” (Pg.817). Throughout the essay, Freud provides clinical examples and case studies to illustrate his theoretical arguments, drawing on his extensive work with patients suffering from various forms of sexual neuroses. Overall, Freud’s essay “Fetishism” offers a psychoanalytic perspective on the complexities of human sexuality and desire, shedding light on the unconscious mechanisms underlying fetishistic behavior. While his theories have been subject to criticism and revision over the years, Freud’s exploration of fetishism remains a foundational text in the field of psychoanalysis and continues to provoke scholarly debate and inquiry.

What does cinema and media have in common? I believe that Lacan’s analysis of “The Mirror Stage” exemplifies a pivotal aspect of them both: an essence of self-identification, recognition, and misrecognition. Through the content we watch, see, and consume, we try to find people, images, and signifiers that validate our being or represent what we intend to be or just want to be.

When an infant looks at its reflection, it doesn’t see just itself, Lacan argues that it sees the idealized version of itself: a being capable of doing and expressing the things that it can’t: an Ideal-I. This figment becomes an aspiration, a version of self that we try to achieve but never will. It stays with us our while lives as we try to become it. This state of living ties into media through the posts and videos we see. By just scrolling and swiping, we subject ourselves to the lives of others, strangers. With no way of knowing the authenticity or genuineness of their content, we believe what we see. Media becomes another source for self-identification as the things we see and consume become the things we want, another aspiration that chances are will be just as or even more unattainable. Mulvey points out the way that cinema also commits to the same kind of method: having an audience look up to the male protagonist and see a likeness between them no matter how much they compare.

On the other hand, we can also find this validation and fantasy of self by having another figure stand in for what is supposed to be our opposite or our counterpart an “object” rather than a subject who embodies someone that is meant to complement us rather than exist beside us.

To be more specific and connect this idea to cinema, I point to Mulvey again.

Mulvey in her analysis and critique of Hollywood cinema and its presentation of female figures in, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” she calls out the “male gaze” that many movies take and affirm so that their audience can derive pleasure from the images, icons, and stereotypes that they present. The female figure becomes a spectacle; she serves the purpose of only being looked at and affirming the male perception that the phallus is superior and determines subjectivity. “Women” becomes object in movies as she serves no other purpose to play other than as an accessory for the male gaze of both her male counterpart and the audience. She describes this style of move-making as both “voyeuristic” and “scopophilic” – “To begin with (as an ending), the voyeuristic-scopophilic look that is a crucial part of traditional filmic pleasure can itself be broken down. There are three different looks associated with cinema: that of the camera as it records the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the characters at each other within the screen illusion” (1965). These movies prioritize the look of the characters at each other as its meant to place people in the main protagonist’s place, making them “see” things the way they do, regardless of how “base” or “objectifying” his “look” really is. Hollywood has determined that the public audience finds an aesthetic pleasure in looking at matters that are meant to be private and in having subjects become only objects to be seen. This observation encapsulates the voyeurism that gets satisfied through the events, affairs, and interactions that characters undergo in their movies. There is a part of ourselves, our being, that we place in the character. We let them play a shockingly large role in defining who we are as a person. We begin to take their “looks,” actions, words, thoughts, feelings, and decisions as what we should see, do, feel, and think. In a way, movie characters lose their important element of fictionality; they begin to exhibit an essence of “realness” that gets us to relate and connect with them.

The discussion is about how mainstream Hollywood perceives women on screen. Over the years, beauty, makeup, and idolization have been the main focus on screen. Prime examples of these iconic figures as Mulvey mentions are people like Marilyn Monroe. On screen she is portrayed as a sex symbol and is still a sex symbol. In her paper Laura Mulvey, goes in depth about cinema and techniques used to gain the audience’s attention. Little did we know that there is a psychological explanation behind these Hollywood films. It is almost used as a “political weapon” as Mulvey states as what is shown on screen. The patriarchal society has been structuring the film industry. It goes back to women having penis envy and men having the fear of castration.  What is seen onscreen is suppose to be pleasurable. Invoke erotica on screen which comes to define the term, scopophilia. This term in psychoanalytical theory is the pleasure of looking. By seeing the images on screen there is a pleasure that enforces the ego that controls behavior.  Often times we see characters on screen that are overly erotic. Often times women in the industry are often dramatized and are seen as giving the most pleasure on screen. The screen gives sexual simulation through sight and therefore the women are seen as sexual objects.  The problem that arises with this is that people see what’s on screen and there is this desire or want to be like what they see. There is fetishism that arises is this as well because fetish scopophilia focuses on the looks alone. For example, the camera zooms in on the women’s naked body on screen and that’s what’s being portrayed to the audience. It is a patriarchal industry because it is men deciding who should be on the screen and what is shown. The problem that arises is that we are watching portrayals of the industry and that’s what’s projected onto people. As the years go by people may notice that different portrayals of what it means to beautiful often changes. In the past people might think of westernized beauty standards. Now cinema is becoming more diverse and different portrayals of beauty is often seen onscreen. The human psyche is often looking for pleasure and Mulvey convey that pleasure can be through sight. It is through the psyche that we learn about people and what they like. Through cinema however the person behind the camera is controlling what we see. The audience is subject to the final product which is the film.

About midway through the article Lacan uses the development of pigeon gonads to further his theory of the mirror stage. The reference is used to show that just like pigeons human development needs a stage of identification or really misidentification in order to form a sense of identity and complete his development. The theory itself is defined by the moment of identification one has with their mirror self- a self that is described and detailed by external figures. We’ve heard the idea that humans are social creatures, but this theory takes that idea beyond what was an innate desire for companionship and argues instead that in order to have any internal sense of identity the human will need external figures to guide him. While guide implies a more purposeful act, the real guiding would be through example- we want to relate to the people around us. Lacan’s theory makes the point that ego is dependent on an external other.

I’d like to take this theory and apply it to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Lacan’s theory applies itself very well to Shelley’s text as the monster’s development embodies well Lacan’s concept of the mirror stage.

Frankenstein’s monster is immediately rejected by his creator upon the moment of his ‘birth’ and so he does not have the ‘other’ figure as Lacan describes it. The monster at this point of his development is trapped in his own baby stage- distracted by sensory exploration and unable to have defined thoughts without language. He is trapped in a limbo of sorts as he faces constant rejection and is denied the ability to identify with any humans. He’s forced to find his mirror in the DeLancey family, who are all kind and loving to each other, as he lives hidden within their home. They are whom his “Ideal I” is based on, and so he desire to become a kind loving man who is affectionate with his brothers and community. Because of his horrific appearance though he will never be able to achieve this. The asymptotic relationship between a man and his Ideal I is made literal in Shelley’s Frankenstein as the monster strives to be someone he will never be able to be. His trauma is furthered when, after he introduces himself to them and hopes to finally be able to identify himself within them, he is violently rejected by the DeLancey family, kicked out and sent back into the woods.

The disharmony between the monsters reality and his ideal manifests itself in constant suffering, and he seeks out his creator with deadly passion (and consequences) in order to finally have some sense of community. I personally was very interested in Lacan’s theory but had the critique that individuals in his theory have no control over what form their ideal self takes, and wondered how this would relate to mental health as well as impact someone’s relationship with society. Why would there be a need for such power societal modes and methods on control that exist today if we really are “always already” apart of society? What happens if there is no healthy other for the individual to identify with? Shelley’s Frankenstein answers this, arguing to me that without the ability to identify with a community one’s sense of identity is permanently damaged, and can lead to intense mental and emotional consequences.

Freud mentions his ideas about the Oedipus Rex moves the “modern audience no less than it did the contemporary greek one, the explanation can only be that its effect does not lie in the contrast between destiny and human will, but is to be looked for in the particular nature of the material on which that contrast is exemplified”(Page 790). Freud explains the differences with Oediups Rex as if the child’s “wish” is “phantasy” were it brings it to be an open realization as it is in “a dream”. AS for  Hamlet shows a “type of man whose power” has a “direct action” and its “paraplysed by an excessive development of his intellect.”Freud lays out his new task of interpretation on dreams as “the task, that is, of investigating the relations between the manifest context of dreams and the latent dream-thoughts, and of tracing out the processes by which the latter have been changed into the former.” (page 793).  where Freud wants to make dreams understandable and it’s a dream of two versions in the same “subject-matter” and into “different languages”.Freud describes language as “a new class of psychical material between the manifest conet of the dream and the conclusions of our enquiry:” where its name as “their latent content,or as we say ) the dream thought” and “dream manifest” its by “mean of our procedure. Freud wants to make dreams and once you understand them it’s one “subject matter in two languages.”Displacement is a “Psychical intenties occurs in the process of dream-formation, and it is as a result of these” that are different “between the text of the dream-content and that of the dream-thoughts comes about.”The grammar of dreams is language condensation displacement which is the mean of red. The Connections of dreams that you get to become flashbacks. Freud sees it as the ego language where it represents logical connections as a “simultaneity in time.”And dreams carry a “method of reproduction” and it is connected to “dream-thoughts”. The grammar of dreams are not logical and are not meant to press on one or the other where you need to choose on them. The interpretation of dreams is that “Then the commoner method of representation would be to introduce the dependent clause as an introductory dream and to add” “principal clause” as the “main dream” . Where sometimes your dreams sometimes it’s “more extensive part of the dream always corresponds to the principal clause”. 

In “The Mirror Stage as Formative” by Jacques Lacan, a young child looking at themself in the mirror for the first time is the main image that sets off and forms the basis of his argument. This event is major to a child’s development, and allows the child to turn themself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside themselves. By seeing themself as an outside being, the child experiences self-alienation through the mirror image. The child can either grow to hate or love this image, and it will have a major impact on the development on their character and sense of self. We are all affected by the mirror image, according to Lacan. The mirror image is a phenomena that follows us throughout the rest of our development and our lives.

What the child sees in the mirror, however, is not real. It is only a quick representation – a snap shot, if you will – of who they are. It is not a full representation of their person, but rather an idealized version. It does not show all aspects of who they are; it only shows their appearance, which is what we place a lot of emphasis on, especially in our modern world. It does not show their health (especially at an internal level), their relationships, their aspirations, their goals, their everyday thoughts and feelings, their day-to-day routine, how they view themselves, their failures, etc. Everything on your outer appearance, or what is seen in the mirror, can seem normal and put-together, while everything on your inner appearance, or what is not seen in the mirror, can be in complete chaos, and vice versa. Therefore, what the child, and what we see in the mirror are fictional. As much as we want to believe that what we see is real, we are only seeing a small particle of our entire being. We may never reach this idealized version of ourselves that we see in the mirror. This can also be applied to social media use in our modern world, as we craft our online personas, which are our “mirror images”. We want these personas to be who we truly are, even if they do not show the ugly and unidealized parts of ourselves. This ideal can never be fully realistically achieved as much as we try. As human beings, we cannot rely solely on the mirror image on our journey to self-realization.

Freud makes a bold claim in the beginning of “Fetishism”. He claims that “the fetish is a substitute for the woman’s penis (817)…” He goes into this interesting discussion about how the male has repressed the fact that women don’t have penises; he then discusses the castration complex in which the male is threatened by this idea of castration which the woman has obviously had to go through; the man’s narcissism and masculinity have greatly increased when it comes to this organ as a result. Freud further mentions that this fetish of the female genitals also saves the fetishist from being homosexual.

In their early lives, men “scotomize” or create mental blind spots when it comes to what organ women have in their bottom regions; they refuse to believe, in a sense, that there’s a lack of a penis. However, Freud then makes the point that “scotomization seems to me particularly unsuitable, for it suggests that the perception is entirely wiped out, so that the result is the same as when a visual impression falls on the blind spot in the retina (817).” There’s a blind spot for this simple fact that women lack penises or have been “castrated”, but Freud prefers to call it “repression.” He then states, “Furthermore, an aversion, which is never absent in any fetishist, to the real female genitals remains a stigma indelebile of the repression that has taken place. We can now see what the fetish achieves and what it is that maintains it. It remains a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it (817).” He writes that this repression has caused a stigma regarding the female genitals that can’t be removed and the fetish that has been born as a result of this is seen as triumph and protection over the threat of castration. Women’s genitals essentially are a representation of castration, which is why men are so narcissistic when it comes to their penis. Freud expands on this by claiming that the fetish prevents the fetishist from being homosexual, “It also saves the fetishist from becoming a homosexual, by endowing women with the characteristic which makes them tolerable as sexual objects […] Probably no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital. Why some people become homosexual as a conse­quence of that impression, while others fend it off by creating a fetish, and the great majority surmount it, we are frankly not able to explain (817-8).” There’s no way to explain why some men take the route they do (becoming homosexual, fetishizing female genitals, etc.) when it comes to the female genital organs.

          In Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud proposes the idea that dreams give insight and aid in understanding our conscious mind. The idea is that our dreams are intense repressed thoughts or beliefs that are trying to come out or make themselves known in our dreams. Freud also possessed the idea that dreams have more than one meaning, “Each of these two versions had a meaning of its own and led in a different direction when the dream was interpreted” ( Page 798). The idea of waking up and writing down your dreams in a journal or notebook could be a means to understand/ interpret your dreams as our dreams don’t tend to be expressed with words as it is a common belief that dreams tend to be more on the artistic side with pictures being the default form of expression “A speech of this kind is often no more than an allusion to some event included among the dream-thoughts, and the meaning of the dream may be a totally different one” (Page 796).

          I found it interesting that Freud possesses the idea that our dreams shield us from our disturbing thoughts, “We shall be led to conclude that the multiple determination which decides what shall be included in a dream is not always a primary factor in dream construction but is often the secondary product of a psychical force which is still unknown to us” (Page, 794). This is very interesting to me as this belief me comes across as more of a nightmare, the polar opposite of a dream, as they tend to be darker in content and portrayal. I think that the correlation between Oedipus and one’s parents that Freud draws, that children have subconscious sexual desires revolving around their parents, to be a nightmare or something that our mind finds disturbing enough to censor.

We are more or less familiar with the idea of “fetishes.” Sigmund Freud has a very curious explanation of fetishes. According to him, it all has to do with penises. A male child imagines that, like him, his mother also has a penis. When he realizes that she does not have a phallus, it causes him to fear losing his penis as well. That is, he fears being castrated. Idolizing his mother, he goes through two processes that work in parallel: on the one hand, he does not come to terms with the fact that his mother does not possess a penis. However, in order to deal with the fear that he too might lose his penis, he substitutes the idea of his mother’s penis with that of another organ (could be his nose or his foot, for example), deriving sexual pleasure from it. According to Freud, “[a fetish] remains a token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it” (817).

If we are to follow Freud’s reasoning, it seems like that it is, at the end of the day, the penis that a man is sexually attracted to, not a person. By attributing his attraction to a penis to another organ of a woman, a man continues to feel attracted to a woman. Does that organ, then, become the repository of his mother’s non-existent penis?

Freud doesn’t end there. He has another point that I found quite curious: “It also saves the fetishist from becoming a homosexual, by endowing women with the characteristic which makes them tolerable as sexual objects” (817). He soon sums up the three options that a man has, by admitting that he does not know why some men become attracted to women by creating a fetish, while others just become gay and, once again, it also goes back to genitals: “Probably no male human being is spared the fight of castration at the sight of a female genital. Why some people become homosexual as a consequence of that impression, while others fend it off by creating a fetish, and the great majority surmount it, we are not frankly able to explain” (818).

There are, therefore, in Freud’s view, three directions that a man goes on: a straight man without a fetish, a straight man with a fetish, and a gay man. Those without a fetish are startled by the sight of a female genital and manage to overcome it. A straight man with a fetish substitutes his mother’s penis with a certain organ that makes women attractive to him because that organ then becomes the invisible penis, while a gay man, well, remains attracted to the penis.

As a gay man, I found this essay quite interesting, even though not entirely believable. Curious is the word. I guess we will never know for sure how exactly it all works.