ABSTRACT
Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of the mirror image consists of an extensive commentary on the work of Henri Wallon. The structure of identity, according to Merleau-Ponty, is a psychophysical posture that arises within the field of intersubjectivity, within the familial field, disposing the infant toward self-knowledge and social understanding. Merleau-Ponty is concerned to modify the cognitivist approach to the mirror image and the infant’s approach to space, self, and other relations. In every case, there is surely a neurophysiological infrastructure, and Merleau-Ponty refers to the function of myelinization in connecting the ‘introceptive’ and ‘extroceptive’ body functions. Martin C. Dillon has argued that Merleau-Ponty mistimes the correlation of self and other recognition at the mirror stage. Thus the specular image functions to raise the visual body into a sociopsychological space in which the infant continues to explore self and other relations. In psychoanalytic terms, the specular image is the basis for a superego.
