The Construction of Self-Ownership Through Reflective Surfaces
None of us have ever really truly saw our faces. We saw ourselves through mirrors and reflective surfaces, which posses a primordial role for viewing the self. But what if the mirrors we are using everyday are lying to us?
Ourselves experiencing our own body is very different than imagining our body or seeing it in front of a mirror or experiencing ourselves looking out of our eyes. We are likely to experience our body as something apart from ourselves, something we have to look upon. The body seems to be more of a an external instrument for who you are than who you are. Our body is a tool where we can inhabit who we really are. Our minds fool themselves believing that this tool is who we really are, but the body is only an interim transporter for the consciousness that is looking throw our own your eyes.
Our minds bear off from the truth through the our own constructions of our inner image, which is made by mirrors or other reflective surfaces. In the absence of them, we might would not know what we look like. We would just experience our persona and the environment without a full awareness of our external physical image. Our mind would still build other self-images, maybe even a made-up picture of ourselves based on how people react to us, but it would be much arduous to identify with an image that was not constantly being reinforced by mirrors.
How we perceive and think about ourselves is the self-concept. Being aware of it is having a concept of ourselves, a feeling of being disconnected and divergent from others. Corporal self-consciousness refers to the awareness of the interaction of our body in space with other objects. The occurrence of seeing ourselves with a third-person point of view threw reflective surfaces or mirrors.
How see ourselves through a mirror influences the representations we have of ourselves compared with an accurate third-person point of view. Mirrors are fundamental instruments for understanding and reviewing the self. Mirror reflections of one’s constitution can be identified the near person’s body space, which empowers overhauling of our bodies representations.
We use mirrors for visual references and navigations of complex actions and to acknowledge ourselves. We can intuitively perceive how a mirror’s reflections relate to our real bodies when we are situated facing one. Viewing the self in a mirror of a reflective surface involves a spatial transformation process over and above pure recognition of oneself in pictures and images.
We use mirrors for visual references and navigations of complex actions and to acknowledge ourselves. We can intuitively perceive how a mirror’s reflections relate to our real bodies when we are situated facing one. A spatial transformation is affecting by watching ourselves in a mirror or reflective surface, differing from the process of the recognition of the self through photographs.
Mirrors poses the power to steal our peace. Some people want to feel good about themselves but what they see on a piece of metal devastates them. A lot of us can probably recall hearing someone describing themselves with a list of negative adjectives and the next step they they take is standing in front of a piece of metal and in their eyes their lives are ruined. Did this person ever saw their face with their naked eye? No.
This implies that we, human beings, let myths and hypothesis dictates our lives. It is a lie that we are telling to ourselves. A piece of a metal that is a human invention and has the power to give you pain or satisfaction, amongst other positive or negative feelings. It can maybe be considered that this artefact is one of the ultimate methods of self-imposed distress due to the fact that it plays with the ones unconscious and conscious fears. As Jorge L. Borges wrote in the first paragraph of his poem “Los Espejos” (The Mirrors):
“I, who have felt the horror of mirrors
Not only in front of the impenetrable crystal
Where there ends and begins, uninhabitable,
An impossible space of reflections”
The visual material from a mirror’s reflection of our body is directed back to the body itself in front of the mirror. During the mirror complete body illusion we do not experience a referral of touch towards the location of the observed image or feel as though we are filling the place in the same spatial position as the image that we see. Instead, due to our inherent knowledge of the mirror’s transformations, the visual content from the mirror reflection is interpreted back to our own body.
The global experience of the complete body illusion is thought to comprise of diverse components. These components include referral of touch, the feeling that the touch one feels are the same as those one sees, as well as explicit feelings of ownership. The mirror surrenders us to a extracorporeal experience. The sensation of the projected out of the body and the allowance of seeing one’s own body from the point of view of an external observer or even be able to project other places.
There is a confrontation to an encounter that can be claimed to be experienced as a separation or unfolding of of the body. Reflective surfaces and mirrors help us to have a relationship and connect with the person we really are as a whole being. We don’t see ourselves as someone but as an image of ourselves. We construct a subjective trace of our portraits, maybe this is the challenge we must phase.
