The triptych of the mirror,the portal,and the resurrection: Re-thinking the psychology of time through Stenner and Zittoun’s academic chronotopic artistry

Mirror: Word origin and history

c.1225, from Old French mireor “a reflecting glass,” earlier miradoir (11c.), from mirer “look at,” from Vulgar Latin *mirare, from Latin mirari “to wonder at, admire” (see miracle). Fig. usage is attested from c.1300. (Good Word Guide, 2025)

The psychoanalytic tradition does not use the term “chronotope,” but a key metaphor for Lacanian psychoanalysts is that of the mirror and the mirror stage. The mirror is characterized by “misrecognition.” If someone looks in the mirror, they see a reflection which is an inverted version of their true image and a peculiarly “mirror” pose that is not generally available in real life or at least in life outside the mirror. It is structured by a paradoxical logic—the subject is reflected back as a presentation of self but is also not-self; distorted by the anticipation of other’s views of the image. It is significant others (the symbolic structure; the big Other) who seduce the subject into misrecognizing the complete and full mirror image as the one true subject, even if this leaves a sense of lack in the subject; a feeling that there is more potential than is captured by the reflection.

Žižek’s Hitchcock is Stenner and Zittoun’s Christopher Nolan. He gives a fabulous exposition of Vertigo in his book Organs without Bodies (Žižek, 2012). There are just a couple of examples that highlight the relevance of the surreal mirror chronotope to Stenner and Zittoun, as follows.

The kino eye depicts not what Scottie (the main protagonist) sees but what he imagines:

Although Scottie does not see Madeline’s profile, he acts as if he is mysteriously captivated by it, deeply affected by it . . . or to put it in Lacan’s terms, this shot of the profile of Madeleine appears on the Other Scene, inaccessible to the subject precisely insofar as it is located in its very core. (Zizek, 2012: 154)

We see Judy’s profile which is completely dark (in contrast to Madeleine’s dazzling profile at Ernie’s) . . . it is as if to fully exist her dark half waits to be filled in by Madeline’s dazzling profile. And at this point, Judy is reduced to a formless pre-ontological stain, she is subjectivised – this anguished half face, totally unsure of itself, designates the birth of the subject. (Zizek, 2012: 160; emphasis in original)

In the language of the chronotope, the mirror space is what Lacan refers to as an extimate (rather than an intimate space)—outside self, recognized as self but distorted by the desire of others. Temporally speaking, the mirror reflects back a compressed/condensed, frozen image interpolated in a symbolic order; an historical archive of misrecognition.

Within Hitchcock’s “created” aesthetic world, Scottie is an appreciator-obsessive of Madeline (if that is not too transgressive a re-imagining of “appreciator”). He watches her from afar. This analysis provides a darker counterpoint to some of the humanistic optimism of Bakhtin’s work. The technology of the “kino” eye draws attention to what lies behind the (male?) gaze: a distorted “pre-ontological stain” of an Other behind the other. The “kino eye” transcends the author per se and speaks to the kind of eternal, universal truths of the mirror. In this regard, there is a Kantian flavor to the mirror motif. It reveals but also distorts what was already there—in an a priori time-space matrix.

Portal: Word origin and history

c.1380, from Middle Latin portale “city gate, porch,” from neut. of portalis (adj.) “of a gate,” from Latin porta “gate.” (Good Word Guide, 2025).

The “portal chronotope” refers to the point of access in a boundary line between worlds. A book or a film as a cultural produce is a portal into another world. Language is a portal between private and public worlds. Stenner and Zittoun demonstrate that real-world chronotopes (creating chronotopes) can be transposed to artistic chronotopes (created chronotopes such as a film) and appreciated/crafted in a creative chronotope. For example, Stephen King (2000) tells us in his memoir that an old desolate piece of ground in his childhood became re-imagined in countless books and films. A portal is a chronotope of its own between different worlds.

Stenner and Zittoun nicely outline the meaning of liminality, its roots in ritual, and the genius of Nolan in creating permanent liminality. There is also a paradox in “permanent liminality.” Stenner and Zittoun point out that “permanent liminality” is both oxymoronic (permanent transition) and paradoxical (irreversible and reversible time). Yet, the paradox is a condition of flourishing within liminal logic, rather than a symptom of any particular subject, in the mirror chronotope. There is one line in particular that is particularly nicely put here and that acts as a springboard into some reflections on what liminal logic within the portal genre offers psychology and the psychology of film:

Nolan’s films enable their appreciators to creatively generate and enjoy experiences in which temporality emerges, not as a single dimension, but as a complex composition: a symphony of mutually resonant or discordant times (Serres, 2019, p.53). They create experiential conditions for grasping and enjoying this symphony of times as it informs our lives. (Stenner & Zittoun, 2026: p. 143)

A complex composition and a symphony of multiple spatio-temporal arenas complement the musical metaphor of polyphony. Different voices may traverse these spaces in the search for truth (see Triptych III below). In Lacanian structures, we have the psychotic, the neurotic, and the pervert, who materialize different configurations to the triadic Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic. In a liminal space and time, in contrast, the primary ontological position and ontological commitment is that of “learning.” Stenner and Zittoun’s work draws attention to the transformative potential of film to elevate human experience. That is why the term “appreciator” is so key.

As a learning space, the portal lies between the public world and the private world. It includes “a more knowledgeable other”—Neils Bohr for Oppenheimer, the architect guide in Inception—and Stenner and Zittoun guide the audience too into the intricacies of showing space-time. Watching the films and reading the article (or doing so in reverse) is a learning pleasure. In the portal, the pliability of structure affords the opportunity to learn from one another; to enhance skills, to teach, to flourish, and to play. We see the result of this in what Dewey (1934) calls “an aesthetic experience” versus regular everyday experience. In such playful aesthetics, there appears to be more of an injection of what the Greeks called eros or open invitation as a pleasure of learning from the other. Eros is the bridge thrown to the other by the word, as Voloshinov and Bakhtin point out (Voloshinov, 1986).

Language is the time-space technological device democratically available to all and mastered by rhetoricians and artists who use the techniques of genre, in the creating, creative, created chronotope. These genres can be devised in the real world such as when a cafe (e.g. Betty’s in Yorkshire); or a village, e.g. (Frigiliana in Spain) devises a time-space in the past as an imitative copy that brings people in. Equally, as Zittoun’s (e.g., 2025) work illustrates, everyday time-spaces, such as the teleology embedded in stage models (future time and state causing the present), can be thrown into creative disarray in ruptures from the trajectory. There are different types of play and pleasures of thinking that attend in the moment-to-moment of development (Zittoun, 2025).

The portal is used to enhance psychological processes. Enhancing memory of the present (déjà vu) is foregrounded as much as the more traditional memory of the past (i.e., Memento, Tenet). Dreams are tools of epistemological investigation for truth. Perception and attention processes separate out and cross the three worlds of created, creating, and creative chronotopes, but re-converge in an “appreciator” creatively understanding art. Daydreaming too is as an art that crosses time and space. In a time when the cultivation of mindfulness is so prevalent, daydreaming is quite a different set of skills—more like basking in the sensory texture of memory, image, and personal connotation in multiple worlds than draining the self away from the world or transcending the world.

In the next and final part of the triptych, we will move from the provocations of anacrisis to those of syncrisis. Syncrisis is more concerned with the tribulations of the hero as they traverse through the depth and variety of “truth” as it is lived.

Resurrection: Word origin and history

c.1300, from Anglo French resurrectiun, Old French resurrection, from Late Latin resurrectionem, from pp. stem of Latin resurgere “rise again” (see resurgent). (Good Word Guide, 2025)

Bakhtin (1993) plays on the important distinction in Russian between pravda (truth as lived or incarnated) and istina (truth as abstract and theoretical). For example, theoretically we know that we all die but when someone we love dies, that knowledge acquires emotional connotations, complexity, and depth. Dostoevsky was the ultimate master of this, Bakhtin (1984: 31–32) claims: “Even ‘truth in itself’ he presents in the spirit of Christian ideology, as incarnated in Christ; that is, he presents it as a personality entering into a relationship with other personalities.” Word meaning, insofar as it transcends the physical, is both metaphysical and embodied in life, physical. In Dostoevsky’s polyphony, big ideas (e.g., the question of whether utilitarianism is possible) are embodied in the lives of characters who fiercely debate and provoke one another, and the author, into further dialogic truth.

As meaning (semantics) is both metaphysical and physical, it can be resurrected outside of its typical space and time into a new space and time. Leiman (2002) refers to this aspect of language as the “epiphanic sign.” A classic example of this is a quotation of someone else’s voice. The quote may or may not be intoned with the other’s accent; for example in mimicry, to turn the voice of another into a ridiculous version of itself. Or the quote may be so reverential that it operates a compelling power on the author and the audience.

South Park (2010) resurrected the form-content of Inception with their parody, “Insheeption.” Sharon (an everyday person and mother of Stan, trapped inside the dream of his school counsellor) has dream logic explained to her, to the background of a boombox uttered by an “expert,” and asks a number of questions cross-examining how dream worlds work:

Sharon: Are you all saying that you can go into a dream and take people in that dream into their own dreams?

Expert 1: Not all the time, just this time, and maybe one other time.

Expert 2: It’s so complex and cool.

Sharon: Just because an idea is overly convoluted and complex doesn’t make it cool. Going to multiple dream levels sounds like a really stupid idea.

Expert 1: You just don’t get it because you’re not smart enough. Let’s move! (South Park, 2010)

This re-imagining of the dialogue of Inception resurrects the film into an absurd version of itself, but in doing so it reveals comically how there is another side to the film in the reception of some “appreciators.” In that regard, the words are twisted around and the author loses some authorial intention and control as they find themselves in a syncrisis—a different space-time to the original.

The embodiment of voice into another’s speech is a key foundation of Bakhtin’s philology. The voices of others may break through into a quotation, may become stylized, may remain hidden undercurrents of speech—hidden dialogue (Shotter and Billig, 1998)—or may, in authoritarian discourse, operate a reverse takeover of the author’s voice such that the authoritarian discourse is the one that predominates the voice of the speaker (Bakhtin, 1981). Meaning is populated with the past and present voices of others; in a metaphysical-physical bond.

Resurrection results in changes in the part-whole relationship of identity. Voice, as part of identity, becomes a synecdoche, in a quotation, for the whole person. That synecdoche can still be a powerful agentive force in the voice of another. When viewed as a Lacanian mirror, the whole (the image) is illusory of the collection of parts. Equally, the parts (e.g., Judy dressed as Madeleine) become a fetishist representation of the whole (as in the everyday expression of a preference for a “type” of date, e.g. height / skin color).

Across the Christopher Nolan films themselves, the characters are resurrected into different time-spaces through the devices outlined by Stenner and Zittoun (e.g., dream machine in Inception, body technology of memory in Memento, backward time in Tenet, doubles and electric transportation in Prestige, cross-examination of different versions of Oppenheimer across space-time in Oppenheimer), signaled by filmic devices such as the use of color and black and white, and of hairpin temporalities. This is a disorienting adventure-time where the characters are both suspended in an original trance state (Inception) and fully agentive in a dream state (where a part of consciousness in the trance state acts as full embodied consciousness in the dream state), where they can smuggle ideas into an other’s part-consciousness or reconstruct meaning from their past.

Stenner and Zittoun (2026) remark that

The three chronotopic worlds are not hermetically sealed off from each other but constitute porous points of passage at the threshold between the worlds of art and life. (p.143)

The points of passage, when viewed as a resurrection, entail not only space-time changes but also associated part-whole changes, form-content changes, and istina-pravda changes. Ontology, epistemology, and axiology are the trinity that provide the rationale for this resurrection (as the self is re-embodied ontologically, is cross-examined, and examines knowledge epistemologically and re-orients its architectonic axiologically).

With resurrection from life to art (creating to created chronotope) in a creative chronotope, there are further intriguing questions about duplicity; both in the sense of deception and in the sense of doubling. The aesthetic capture and resurrection from life into art creates the possibility of an authentic, agentic version of the hero in the created chronotope of the art world as well as in the creating world of life itself. The performing self as opposed to the background (pre-ontological stain) self is where some aesthetics places agency and authenticity. Dictators, for example, like to place their image in propaganda art and exert power from this—as an exalted version of self and society (and duplicity is hence revealed through inevitable hypocrisy). In democratic, pluralistic art, different versions of the self authentically exist in parallel across different chronotopes. If shaping the form of one’s life is done according to an aesthetic, we lose control over this self in the “created world” of others and the kind of agency it exerts. Others have freedom to work with our duplicates and their secondary agency, our own aesthetic products, and refract these through their own artistic prism. In the sense of loss of authorial control over one’s aesthetic product, the movement from author to hero is an everyday polyphony characteristic of the porous lines between created, creative, and creating chronotopes. This too can happen in psychology research. Madill and Sullivan (2018) outline the mirrors and portraits held up to participants viewing write-ups of their words. While the loss of agency can be infuriating as well as liberating for authors, finding themselves heroes in the created world, the democratic, open attitude of the appreciator is governed by principles of the open society—of welcome and response to such depictions in the creating world.