Author: Katja Guenther

Since the late 18th century, scientists have placed subjects — humans, infants, animals, and robots — in front of mirrors in order to look for signs of self-recognition.

Mirrors served as the possible means for answering the question: What makes us human?

In “The Mirror and the Mind,” Katja Guenther traces the history of the mirror self-recognition test, exploring how researchers from a range of disciplines — psychoanalysis, psychiatry, developmental and animal psychology, cybernetics, anthropology and neuroscience — came to read the peculiar behaviors elicited by mirrors.