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This notion of the 'specular ego' was first developed in the essay, 'The mirror Stage.'
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The term ‘counterpart’ (semblable) plays an important part in Lacan’s work from the 1930s on, and designates other people in whom the subject perceives a likeness to himslef (principally a visual likeness). The counterpart plays an important part in the intrusion complex and in the mirror stage.
The ‘imago of the counterpart’ is interchangeable with the image of the subject’s own body, the specular iamge with which the subject identifies in the mirror stage, leading to the formation of the ego. This interchangeability illustrates the way that the subject constitutes his objects on the basis of his ego. The image of another perosn’s body can only be identified with insofar as it is perceived as similar to one’s own body, and conversely the counterpart is only recognized as a separate, identifiable ego by projecting one’s own ego onto him.
