title: "Oh, that I might be parted from my body": mirror perplexity and the nonrelational self.
abstract: Psychoanalytic models have a commonly held view of necessary and accurate mirroring in the dialectic of emergent and already formed aspects of the self. Mirroring-perplexity, however, is a cognitive and affective state found in a group of patients for whom reflective mirroring results in a dissociative rather than a unifying experience of body and mind. A review of the myth of Narcissus reveals that mirroring requires a relational mediation of self and mirror image through another. This ontological organization affectively links the simultaneous sense of being in the body and in the reflected image after experiencing a state of dyadic union. Clinical vignettes illustrate the effects of missing maternal relational response initially made evident in unmirrored self-representations in the transference.
authors.affiliation: 16 West Henry Clay Ave., Ft. Wright, KY 41011. E-mail: Gnosis1967@AOL.com.
authors.forename: Alexander H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D003861:Depersonalization / Q000523:psychology*; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009229:Mythology / Q000523:psychology; D009289:Narcissism; D009769:Object Attachment; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D012649:Self Concept