"We have only to understand the mirror phase as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image - whose predestination to this phase effect is sufficiently indicated by the use, in analytic theory, of the ancient term imago.

This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the enfans stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it , in the universal, its function as a subject."

Jacques Lacan Ecrits


Was it the glass or the image shattered?
After, a sharp fraction stood
Reflecting for us all
Of necessity.
Do not despise it.
Illusion once made you whole

Ah! Now I see.
It is you that is real, not me.
I observe the proper me
In your deft holding.
Wholeness is in your gift.
Now I can be what you have me see,
Which is not what I feel,
But I am no longer illusioned.
I know I am not real

I don't believe you.
I will barrier the gap
Between us.
Will stop it:
I will not be reflected.
The unreciprocal is doomed
To be only Real,
But I will not allow
You to distort me

A fly's eye of mirrors
Kaleidoscopes you and me
Tenderly.
There is no taking away,
Day
Light
Playing,
Reflecting and refracting
Between us.


Multiplying images,
Fraction and whole,
Glimpsing a soul

Scared half to life
I am made now
I imagine
I am here and there.