‘I am watching you. Are you watching yourself in me?¹’: reflection as an act of triangulation

Abstract

This paper approaches the process of ‘reflection’ as an interpersonal and intra-personal creative act. As commonly used, the word ‘reflection’ appears to reference two seemingly different processes; the returning of a mirror image and the process of reflective thought. Examining the intersection of these two definitions – from infant development, through attachment theory to post-Kleinian thinking and Lacan – this paper finds that the act of ‘reflection’ can be conceived of as an act of triangulation, in a mathematical sense, whereby a pre-existing but unknown point is found/made using two known points as the vertices.

Keywords:

• Reflection
• triangulation
• creativity
• infant development
• mirroring
• Oedipal situation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. From Spirit of Place by Lawrence Durrell (1969): p 156.

2. Chambers Dictionary of Etymology: s.v. ‘reflection’.

3. Ibid.

4. This is echoed in the analytic process, since ‘analysis has to invent the patient, not only investigate him’ (Malcolm, 1980, p. 71). This attributed meaning can become potentially malevolent for patients when the analyst’s history functions as an unacknowledged variable. Hence the importance of the training analysis.

5. For Lacan (1954), castration is not anatomical but signifies lack; the impossibility of reaching total satisfaction: To achieve some satisfaction, it is necessary to renounce total satisfaction and the possession of the lost object. However, the prohibitive function of the paternal metaphor – the ‘non’, which prevents the child from possessing the mother – has considerable affinity with Freud’s castration complex (Fink, 1997).

6. Chambers Dictionary of Etymology: s.v. ‘author’.

7. The New Testament also portrays God as productive, ex nihilo: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1:1). But, in the New Testament, God is, within himself, a generative Holy Trinity – God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanna Laurens

Joanna Laurens is a psychodynamic counsellor and group-work practitioner in private practice. She is also a published and produced playwright.