ABSTRACT
The myth has obvious resonances with what Lacan described as the mirror stage. Lacan interprets the human infant’s capacity to recognize itself in a mirror as simultaneously a revelatory moment of identification of and with the Ideal-I and a devastating moment in which the discrepancy between the unified image of the reflection and the uncoordinated body of the infant becomes apparent. Like the Neoplatonists, Lacan makes the experience of the mirrored image the precipitating event through which human subjectivities are formed and emphasizes that the mirror functions as a lure: captivation leads to capture. Just as Zagreus is torn apart, and Plotinus’s souls lose their immaterial unity, so the infant experiences itself as a fragmented multiplicity, a corps morcelé.2
