Cartel: The Lacanian Baby

Argument

The human subject is born prematurely, the so-called baby, and is incapable of sustaining life by itself, so an utter dependency is born between the baby and the Other of care. Lacanian psychoanalysis is one of the most sophisticated theories ever articulated about human subjectivity, as it provides a trajectory of psychic subject formation that includes the three registers of human experience and a temporality before one’s birth. We want to explore various aspects that concern the concept of the baby, in its theoretical, discursive, cultural and clinical aspects. 

Members and our questions:

Erik Larson

My question regarding the Lacanian baby is around cuts and the function of cuts in clinical work with children, reflecting on the work a small subject engages in sculpting these cuts and how this relates to the constitution of the subject’s position relative to its others and its body. 

Jas Mattise

Fascia:

Only as recently as in 2018 has fascia been recognized as an organ in its own right. It is the largest organ in the human body, superseding the skin. Already in the womb, the embryo is enveloped by fascia in the form of the amniotic sac, being the container for life to occur. It is also the first tissue that the baby grows and develops, marking its first sensory and erogenous zone. Unlike the skin, which functions as a permeable boundary and sensor between our body and the outside world, fascia is a fluid body-wide communication system that provides us with information about the internal state of the organism. Many alternative practitioners argue that fascia plays a major role in most, if not all, psychosomatic and stress related pains. However, just as the feminine sexual organs have historically been ignored, the significance of fascia has been largely omitted from medical discourse. I argue that fascia as a Not-all organ of the Real that is chaotic, fractal and complex (and largely unknown) not only introduces an unrecognized drive, namely that of pressure and motion, but that it also presents us with a signifier that provides an entry point to the formation of the unconscious.

Elnaz Yaghoobi

How Paranoia (and/or Paranoid Episodes) in adults can be conceptualized, considering the castration anxiety and its vicissitudes in infantile position.

Chara Stephanou 

There comes a moment when the infant appears “occupied” and shows early signs of an interiority, i.e. of psychic and mental life. Although the baby will remain uncoordinated and non-verbal for a good while and vexed by needs and anxiety it cannot properly handle nor express in the years to come; onwards, the infant’s engagement with the outer world, its levels of self-awareness, and the evolving nature of its sense of self will continue to grow. 

To observe such a moment is to witness the onset of an ontological metamorphosis of a Subject starting to take formation. In the next weeks and months, the infant (a human being) will slowly acquire consciousness and presence, transform from “just-being” to “being-there” (Dasein), and shift from idle to meaningful existence. 

It remains inconclusive whether the observable changes are biologically dictated or pure psychogenesis, but our hypothesis remains metapsychological and not predicated upon a particular aetiology. All psychoanalytical theories emphasize intersubjectivity and the link to the other (and the Other) is fundamental. However, whereas object-relations theory envisions the possibility of a complete and perfectly satisfying relation between the subject and the object, Lacanian theory innovates by establishing that it is the relationship of the drive to the Other without which the Subject cannot be formed. 

More to the point, Lacanian theory holds that it is upon the third stage of the drive’s relationship to the other, when the infant makes of himself an object of another (emphasized in Lacan as “having oneself be” rather than the “passive stage” as Freud had named it) that Subject formation is completed. On the one hand, the type of relationship the infant offers itself to as an object allows us to eventually classify its structure (neurotic, psychotic, perversion). On the other hand, “failure of the establishment of the circuit of the drive” shall give rise to autism and mental retardation. The phallilization/castration of the infant demands a level of separation without which the infant shall remain the mother’s non-separated, de-phallicized object a. 

Plus One: Hilda Fernandez

The hysteric fantasy of the sexual baby

Hysteria is the most common neurosis and its clinical presentation is characterized by the presence of diverse symptoms that are constantly shifting. The hysteric might suffer from chronic sexual dissatisfaction, repeated stressful dramas, enjoyments that cause guilt or shame, or a persistent sense of impotence. In my clinical experience I find a common fantasmatic construction which supports the linguistic structure that frustrates the hysteric’s desire and that has to do with an overinvestment in the phallic value of the figure of the baby. The Freudian trope of “your Majesty, the baby,” in hysteria, manifests as the fantasy of being the absolute object of sexual satisfaction for the Other. I want to conceptualize this fantasy by developing a theoretical articulation of how jouissance, anxiety, and (frustrated) desire are ensembled.