(corps morcelé) Lacan, Jacques ‘s conceptualization of the disconnected and unorganized state of the psyche prior to the mirror stage. As Lacan theorizes it, the child under the age of 18 months is unaware that their body is distinct from their mother’s body, and similarly unaware that their body is a unitary whole. The memory of this feeling of disassociation remains with the subject throughout their life, buried in the unconscious, but constantly threatening to return to the surface and shatter the illusion of wholeness the subject lives by.