THE MIMICS PROCESS AND THE ARISING OF SELF

Abstract

The article analyses the role of imitation in early development of the sense of self. Imitation is a psychological process intentionally oriented to others in which babies learning how to coordinate their body schema with perceiving others’ movements and visible gestures. Babies don’t imitate an isolated gesture; they imitate a contextualized action oriented to them. As babies develop, imitation is supplemented by a system of reciprocation between self and other. This reciprocated interaction creates an affective mirroring that produces many circular reactions. Those reactions are incorporated by the self and become part of a basic mechanism that contributes to the emergence of the self and occupy a central role on identification processes. This perspective attributes a major role to imitation in the emergence of the self and presents some convergences and divergences from the traditional psychoanalytical view of subjectivity.

Key-words: imitation; self; development