Detail of fresco in the Garden Room of the Villa of Livia, Prima Porta, north of Rome, Italy, circa 39 BC

Foundations of Psychoanalysis

Mimicry and the Temptations of Space

Daniel Heller-Roazen 

Saturday, October 10, 2026 •10:00 AM – 12:30 PM

“The Mirror Stage” contains a reference to an article by Roger Caillois on mimicry. This presentation will explore the role of Caillois’s concept of mimicry and the “temptation of space” in Lacan’s writing, while bearing in mind the contrasting theory of the “mimetic faculty” Walter Benjamin developed in the same years. 

Suggested readings: Lacan: “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” (1936). Caillois, Roger: “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia” (1935); Benjamin, Walter: “On the Mimetic Faculty” (1933). 

Location: In-person in NYC and online via Zoom.

Fee: $40; for students with ID: $20. Registration details to follow.

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Daniel Heller-Roazen is Arthur W. Marks ‘19 Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. The most recent of his many books are Absentees: On Variously Missing Persons (2021), No One’s Ways: An Essay on Infinite Naming (2017), and Far Calls: On Omens, Slips and Epiphanies (Zone Books, 2025).