I am still interested in how Lacan's theory of the "mirror stage" correlates with Freud's theories on child identification. Lacan argues that a child's first identification comes from the "mirror stage", in which an ego can then be established. Would Freud agree with this? Lacan further describes the ego and how it becomes dependent upon external objects. But I am confused as to how a child then develops their personality and specific characteristics. Lacan believes that the subject's personality depends on social experiences which shape how they view and feel about certain images and objects. Lacan developed Freud's work on the "I" and how it progresses within a child but how much of his own thoughts did he derive on his own? How would Freud analyze the mirror stage and does it fit in with his other theories of psychoanalysis?

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It is interesting that Lacan says the child's self-identification comes from the mirror stage (p. 2). This would differ from what Freud believes, (I think). Freud seems to say that the child's first self-identification comes from the father (or perhaps the parents, since the child cannot distinguish between the sexes at such an early age) and later, to be like the father. I wonder what Freud thought about the mirror stage and how it related to his theories of psychoanalysis. Perhaps, he would think that Lacan's "primordial form" (p. 2) of the I does exist, and is later "objectified in the dialetic of identification with the other"-- "the other" for Freud being the father. I wonder, too, what Benveniste thought of Lacan's mirror stage, since he seems to say that self-identification comes from not only language and the empty word "I", but also from an opposition-- "I" and "you". This is interesting to me because Lacan seems to indicate that the child does not view its mirror image as a "you", but as a "primordial I". Lacan's self-identification for Benveniste, then, is when "language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject" (p. 2). Lacan has somehow made the mirror stage fit in with other forms of self-identification-- by having a "primordial I" that is not yet a fully formed "I", Lacan allows other modes of self-identification to slip in.

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