How long can one go without staring into a mirror? It is said that the average person can survive up to thirty days without food, and seven days without water, but I venture to guess, that when it comes to going a period of time without looking at one’s self in the mirror, the average person can last a far less period of time.

Most people are aware that his or her sense of self is mediated through image. However, most people are likely unaware of how his or her sense of self is entirely mediated through and dominated by the image, that is the image of one’s self as it is presented to the world, i.e. how one “looks.” So many other qualities and characteristics do one justice, and yet the eyes, along with one’s image, dominate.

In classical psychoanalysis it is the eyes that a child both values and fears losing the most. Freud arrives at this understanding through an analysis of dreams, but also through an analysis of literature, specifically in his book, “The Uncanny,” where as a literary critic, he analyzes and assesses a story titled “The Sandman” by E.A. Hoffman, where a child fears losing his eyes to a nightmarish figure by the same name.

Years later the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would expand on this topic and write a famous paper within, both the psychoanalytic and literary community, where he elaborates on what he calls ‘The Mirror Stage;’ a moment in the early life where a child sees and becomes aware of its own reflection in a mirror. For Lacan, this is a profound moment in the life of a child. It is at this point that a child experiences the full weight of what it means to exist, both internally, unto his or herself, and inevitably, as something external to which others are able to experience and interact with. Some have even interpreted Lacan to mean that a child has no sense of his or her self at all until this moment. Regardless, such a moment is troubling and exhilarating for a child; exhilarating because the child is able to interact with the world on a level that promises a degree of recognition, but troubling because a child realizes that it’s image can never do complete justice to the reality of the child and what he or she is feeling.

And yet, it is this later dimension to one’s image that often makes it appealing because it allows an individual to invest in one aspect of his or her self at the cost of ignoring another. This later aspect involves one’s inner feelings, which most people, whether they are willing to admit it or not, are not comfortable with. It is this same dimension that narcissists choose to run from.

Indeed, if one reads the myth of Narcissus, one realizes that the character falls in love with his image only, and not the entirety of his self. This an important distinction, one that allows for an explanation of a common misconception, that contrary to popular belief, narcissists do not love themselves. Instead, a narcissist’s love is focused on the image only at the cost of their feelings that stem from childhood that are too painful to confront. The investment in the image becomes a rejection of the inner world associated with feelings. These are points elaborated on by Erich Fromm, Alexander Lowen, and others.

Without going in to any more psychoanalytic theory, suffice it to say that one’s image is intimately connected with one’s psychological development. But the image does not simply involve the use of direct sight. It also means the idealized image that is kept in the back of one’s mind, often standing as the “measuring rod” or standard by which one judges one’s self, whether one is trying to be a good photographer, actor, musician, chef, dancer, writer, athlete, Buddhist, or yoga instructor. That is, even when one’s orientation toward the world is not dominated by the direct use of sight, one almost always carries some idealistic image in one’s mind derived from the people one admires, the people that one is trying to conform to, perhaps a famous actor, or photographer, an author one admires, or even a set of doctrines, principles, ideas, or beliefs.

As a yoga instructor, I am keenly aware that when students see me smoking a cigarette that I may not be in conformity with the expected yoga lifestyle (as if smoking or nor really has anything to do with yoga anyway). And as someone who practices meditation, in the back of my mind, I often find myself trying to adapt to the image of a meditator, or to an image of the Buddha. That is, if I can sit there quietly still and “looking the part” then I must be doing everything right. But it is far from true. Ironically, Buddhism has tried, more than any another religion to devalue and de-emphasize the importance of one’s image by wearing saffron robes and having shaved heads, precisely because of how much one’s identity is falsely invested in the image, and yet, Buddhism is one of the most easily recognizable religions because of it.

One of the things this makes clear is that the image will always be there no matter what, but there is a choice in how much one decides to invest in it. Of course, this does not mean it is wrong to care about “how one looks,” but it does mean that a person should be keen to what it is that really does justice to one’s self. It is often said that we both want to love and be loved because of who one is on the inside, and yet we hardly live up to this proclamation, and there are reasons for it.