Best Version Selfie

I wrote this poem after reading a bit about the psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, and his theory of the Mirror Stage.  I liked his idea about how the image in a mirror becomes the ‘ideal ego’ for a baby at certain stage of development.  It portrays a wholeness that the baby does not experience without it.  The existential chaos of the baby’s body is not reflected there. 

Later on, disillusionment with life can set in because an individual never fully measures up to the ideal self. Lacan called this the tyranny of the ‘ego ideal’: to look at oneself from the perspective of perfection, and to be found wanting.  In the world of social media, this is increasingly becoming a problem for many people, especially young people. 

I’ve struggled to finish this poem for a long time. It might not be finished now. There’s a lot going on it. Perhaps too much.  

In the selfie taken at Shore Shelter Lodge, St Ives, if you look closely you can see over my shoulder a photograph of my late uncle: boat-builder, Trinity House bosun, lifeboatman. I am pretty sure what he would have made of Lacan and his ideas And of my poem.