Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Mimetic Desire: Convergence Between the Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Empirical Research on Imitation

reduplication of an event with closer attention to its purpose....Mimesis is the reduplication of an event for communicative purposes. Mimesis requires that the audience be taken into account. (286) 2. For a comprehensive review of infant imitation research, see Nadel and Butterworth’s (1999a) Imitation in Infancy. 3. For a more complete review of mirror neurons and their functional and evolutionary significance, see Stamenov and Gallese (2002). 4. For a more extensive analysis of preverbal representation and deferred imitation, see Meltzoff (1990b); Meltzoff and Moore (1994, 1997, 1998). 5. See Guillaume (1926), Imitation in Children. Paul Guillaume recognized the universality of imitation in children, in the acquisition of language as well as the apprehension of another’s mind and one’s person, and set out to study the psychological mechanisms that produced