CriticaLink | Lacan: The Mirror Stage | Terms

In his research into how humans and animals learn and solve problems, Wolfgang Köhler observed that learners experience a moment in which the elements of their task or problem "come together"--in Kohler's terms, emerge as a gestalt--for them in ways that significantly advance their understanding and problem-solving success. This moment of insight is the ah-ha experience. Aha-Erlebnis is the German term to which Lacan alludes. The story of Archimedes of Syracus (287 - 212), who discovered the principle of bouyancy while taking a bath and then ran through the streets naked shouting "eureka!" offers a classical version of the ah-ha experience.

For Lacan, the ah-ha experience is analogous to the mirror stage, which also involves a moment of sudden insight that leads to a significant change in the subject's mental organization.

• Baldwin, James Mark
• Bosch, Hieronymus
• Bühler, Charlotte
• Caillois, Roger
• Freud, Anna
• Hegel, G.W.F.
• Köhler, Wolfgang
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude
• Wallon, Henri

• Aha-Erlebnis
• anxiety
• captation
• Cogito
• defenses of the ego
• fragmented body
• Gestalt
• Ideal-I
• identification
• imago
• Innenwelt
• legendary psychasthenia
• libido
• méconnaissance
• mirror stage
• neurosis
• object
• obsession
• other
• Oedipus complex
• perception consciousness system
• phobia
• primary narcissism
• psychosis
• subject
• transitivism
• Umwelt
• Verneinung