L’infantile : ses multiples dimensions

Abstract

This text throws light on the fundamental importance of the infantile in clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis. The infantile may be understood in psychoanalytic experience as the original expression of psychic reality, of the unconscious dimension of human subjectivity. The infantile is concerned with the modes of registration of what Freud calls Erlebnis, “infantile experiences”. In clinical psychoanalysis, the issues related to the efficacy of these registrations will always be operative, their force will always be present and living, along with their potential for metabolization and symbolization. The infantile emerges as a current and living representative of the search for a creative and reparative experience of everything that could not be experienced as continuity of being, as potential expression, as creative tension. The transformation of the relationship to the infantile involves facilitating a reorganization, a resignification, so that something new can emerge. Whether the source of disillusionment or inspiration, it will always be a reference.