The phenomenon of mirror-image gazing is of both practical and theoretical interrest. In addition to affording one a diagnostic clue to the existence of the life-review, it may provide an unusually excellent experimental basis for the study and further elucidation of the changing concepts of self-and body-image, and the phenomenon of depersonalization, that accompany the rapid, profound, and multiple bodily and mental changes in the aged.
Certain schizophrenic and neurotic patients are also known to seek out and gaze at their images in the mirror,talk to their images, and reveal many similar behavioral manifestation.