As most humanities grad students know (whether they want to or not), sometime around the 15th month of a child's life, he/she goes through what the theorist Jacques Lacan calls the mirror stage. At the "mirror stage" a child begins to recognize that the child in the mirror is not someone else, it's them. In psychoanalytical theory, this moment is critical: it is when we develop a sense of subjectivity, or 'self,' that is...well...inherently fraught.Fraught or not, we're pretty sure Holden has hit this stage...because when we ask him where "Holden is" he points to both the person in the mirror AND himself. And today, when he saw a picture of himself, he pointed at it, then at himself.
Pretty cool right? Even cooler: he seems to be learning how to say his name. When we ask him about "Holden," he's been pointing to himself and saying "Da-den."
A sense of 'self.' Pretty heady stuff. And if Lacan is right about this stage, let's just hope that he--and Freud--are wrong about their theories of mothers.
That's is so cute that he can say his own name. Pretty soon, he'll be spelling it. Ack, they grow up so fast!
ReplyDeleteI think after this phase there is the self-conscious stage where suddenly they are super camera shy. While X loves looking at pictures of himself, he will throw a fit if he catches someone taking a picture of him.
Oh no! It's already hard enough to get pictures because he won't sit still!
ReplyDeleteAs for saying his name--I just wonder how long it'll take him to pronounce the "h"--it's a pretty hard consonant when you think about it.