Archetypal-Imaging and Mirror-Gazing

Abstract

Mirrors have been studied by cognitive psychology in order to understand self-recognition, self-identity, and self-consciousness. Moreover, the relevance of mirrors in spirituality, magic and arts may also suggest that mirrors can be symbols of unconscious contents. Carl G. Jung investigated mirrors in relation to the unconscious, particularly in Psychology and Alchemy. However, the relationship between the conscious behavior in front of a mirror and the unconscious meaning of mirrors has not been clarified. Recently, empirical research found that gazing at one’s own face in the mirror for a few minutes, at a low illumination level, produces the perception of bodily dysmorphic illusions of strange-faces. Healthy observers usually describe huge distortions of their own faces, monstrous beings, prototypical faces, faces of relatives and deceased, and faces of animals. In the psychiatric population, some schizophrenics show a dramatic increase of strange-face illusions. They can also describe the perception of multiple-others that fill the mirror surface surrounding their strange-face. Schizophrenics are usually convinced that strange-face illusions are truly real and identify themselves with strange-face illusions, diversely from healthy individuals who never identify with them. On the contrary, most patients with major depression do not perceive strange-face illusions, or they perceive very faint changes of their immobile faces in the mirror, like death statues. Strange-face illusions may be the psychodynamic projection of the subject’s unconscious archetypal contents into the mirror image. Therefore, strange-face illusions might provide both an ecological setting and an experimental technique for “imaging of the unconscious”. Future researches have been proposed.

The ‘not-so-strange’ body in the mirror: A principal components analysis of direct and mirror self-observation

“…Interestingly, whereas other multisensory perceptual body illusions seem to elicit, on average, higher subjective ratings of ownership for the body (Botvinick & Cohen, 1998;Petkova & Ehrsson, 2008) compared to the face (Ainley, Tajadura-JimŽnez, Fotopoulou, & Tsakiris, 2012;Ma et al, 2016;Tajadura-JimŽnez et al, 2012), illusory mirror-based perceptual experiences, based purely on prolonged visual feedback, seem to occur only when viewing the face (Caputo, 2010(Caputo, , 2013aCaputo et al, 2012;Schwarz & Fjeld, 1968) and not the body. However, neither such illusory experiences have yet been examined within the same participants for the face and body, so direct comparisons cannot be made.…”

“…We designed a 20-item questionnaire based on previous research into embodiment (Longo, SchŸŸr, Kammers, Tsakiris, & Haggard, 2008) and experiences elicited from self-observation during the Strange-Face-Illusion (Caputo, 2010(Caputo, , 2013aCaputo et al, 2012;Schwarz & Fjeld, 1968). The items were designed to quantify a wide range of both normal and unusual subjective experiences during self-observation of the body.…”

“…During the Òstrange face illusionÓ it has been reported that participants who view their face in a mirror at low illumination for several minutes describe experiences that their reflection changes and distorts; for example, appearing deformed, like another person, or like another being/animal (Caputo, 2010(Caputo, , 2013aCaputo et al, 2012; see also Schwarz & Fjeld, 1968 for an earlier investigation of the phenomenon). It is surprising that healthy participants can experience strong visual illusions after only a few minutes of normal mirror viewing, given that this is an everyday activity.…”

“…It is surprising that healthy participants can experience strong visual illusions after only a few minutes of normal mirror viewing, given that this is an everyday activity. Thus, it is possible that demand characteristics play a role in these reported strange face illusions, particularly as the illusion is yet to stand up to full scientific rigor, with the few experiments so far reporting the phenomenon having a small sample size and not being fully controlled (Caputo, 2010(Caputo, , 2013a. Less surprising, however, is the finding that these strange illusory experiences are found to be stronger in individuals suffering from schizophrenia (Caputo et al, 2012) and it is thought that they are related to experiences of body dysmorphia and difficulty with self/other distinctions.…”

“…We were particularly interested in exploring whether seeing the body in a mirror would result in a subjective experience that was equivalent to seeing the body directly (see Bertamini et al, 2011;Jenkinson & Preston, 2015;Preston et al, 2015), or if mirror observation would produce strange perceptual experiences, like those reported during prolonged self-viewing of the face (Caputo, 2010(Caputo, , 2013aCaputo et al, 2012;Schwarz & Fjeld, 1968). Additionally, we explored whether these experiences related to pre-existing tendencies to: (i) have anxiety about ones appearance (appearance anxiety), (ii) posses body dysmorphic-type motivations for using mirrors, (iii) have unusual dissociative experiences (e.g.…”