Scott Alexander (reading by Solenoid Entity / Astral Codex Ten podcast host)

Is this actually traditional?

It definitely is in psychoanalysis, and Fink says that, quote, direct threats of castration still are made more often than many think, end quote.

I'm having trouble figuring out the relationship between this story and a different story, which is that the child notices on its own that the mother sometimes leaves to go do other things, traditionally have sex with the father.

It concludes that it must be lacking something that it would need to keep its mother happy, traditionally a phallus, meaning that there is a lack at the heart of its essence, traditionally castration.

It decides, if it had that thing which it lacks, its mother would come back and everything would be perfect forever.

And I'm having even more trouble separating both of these stories from a third story, the story of the mirror stage, in quotes.

Imagine a baby moving around.

At some point it sees its own hand in its peripheral vision, a pink blob.

At some other point it might see its feet.

Sometimes it cries and noise comes out of it.

Other times it has thoughts or feelings or something.

As it grows, it might realize some correlations between all these things.

For example, it can use the location of the pink blob in front of it to calibrate its aim as it reaches for a block.

But this is far from having a coherent self-concept.

See my review of Julian Jaynes on Theory of Mind, link in post.

Jaynes claims that e.g.

the Homeric gods didn't have a full concept of unified mind, only various bundles of emotions and thoughts located in various parts of their bodies.

At some point the child sees itself in a mirror.

This is a sort of eureka moment where it realizes it's a united entity with a specific structure.

A bunch of correlations suddenly snap into place and it realizes it can at least aspire to coherence.