Summary: Panel 4: From Babies to MaturitySincerity and Freedom in Psychoanalysis: a studio conference inspired by Sándor Ferenczi's Clinical Diary18-20 October 2013Shaul Bar-Haim - “Infants do not love; they must be loved”: Omnipotence, dependency and the Ferenczian notion of childhoodAntal Bókay - The Idea of the Child – Ferenczi and OthersJulianna Vamos - Free to Move – Free to BeKathleen Kelley-Lainé - Freedom to Grow: Inspired by Ferenczi’s Clinical DiaryFacilitator: Gianna WilliamsShaul Bar-Haim - “Infants do not love; they must be loved”: Omnipotence, dependency and the Ferenczian notion of childhoodOn the 7th of August 1932, Sandor Ferenczi wrote in his Clinical Diary the following words: “The newborn child uses all its libido for its own growth; indeed, it must be given additional libido to ensure that it grows normally. Normal life thus begins with exclusive, passive object-love. Infants do not love; they must be loved” (Clinical Diary, 189). This quotation represents Ferenczi’s much wider understanding of childhood, as he perceived it in the early 1930s – the last years of his life. In a series of notable publications, he portrayed childhood as a state of passivity, dependency and weakness. In order to survive, he argued, children must not only learn their carers’ formal language, but also to fully internalize their carers’ unconscious wishes and desires. To survive, he believed, children must develop an ability to ‘identify with an aggressor’, who he often saw as being their own parents. Childhood, according to the later writings of Ferenczi, is a matter of survival.But this was not always the case. In his early psychoanalytical works, and mainly in his influential essay, ‘Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality’, published in 1913, Ferenczi had a different picture of infancy and early childhood. Children, he then thought, are motivated by their feelings of omnipotence. From a very early stage, perhaps from the moment of birth, they perceive themselves as capable and powerful beings. According to this perception of childhood, infants believe in their power to make their carers attune to their needs rather than to attune themselves to their carers’ desires.So what happened to the ‘Ferenczian child’ between ‘The Stages of Development’ and ‘The Clinical Diary’? My aim is to provide a short history of the changes in Ferenczi’s concept of childhood, during the two decade period, 1913-1932. This might help us to have a better picture of the ways in which Ferenczi thought of childhood – from a state of ‘omnipotence’ to a state of what he famously described as a ‘confusion of tongues’. It will also be argued that the reasons for this change are not solely related to Ferenczi’s own personal life, but also to some historically major changes in the psychoanalytical understanding of childhood, and the emergence of child-psychoanalysis after the First World War.Antal Bókay - The Idea of the Child – Ferenczi and OthersThe paper discusses the idea of the child as a projection, a construction of the self in psychoanalysis and in literature. The major “psychoanalytic philosopher” of the idea of the child was Sándor Ferenczi who wrote several important papers (pre-eminently, the “Confusion of tongues between adults and the child”) and discussed the theme in his Clinical Diary. Ferenczi’s reflections on the meaning of trauma and seduction for understanding neurosis and mental illness lead to a powerful restatement of the distinction between the child and the adult and of the anthropological difference that is connected to it. For Ferenczi the trauma is not only the cause of neurosis but also a constitutive factor of human subjectivity. The child, who resides in us, is a trauma product, a deeply hidden special narrative, a heterogeneous unfolding of inner energies inscripted by early primary events as signifiers. The primary source of the trauma is relational: the irreconcilable difference of the child and the adult. Before the trauma there exists a tie of love between the adult and the child. The child plays out its desire on the level of tenderness, imagination and play. The adult has a different form of desire, he interprets the process sexually, with the language of passion. Adult passion intrudes into the child’s world brutally, the child starts to panic. To defend itself its only possibility is to identify with the aggressor. Not becoming aggressive, but accepting as normal its position and also introjecting the guilt feeling of the aggressor. Connected to the psychoanalytic views of Ferenczi I discuss parallel philosophical positions (Merleau-Ponty, Giorgio Agamben) concerning the figure of the child and analyze a few literary-poetical examples.Julianna Vamos - Free to Move – Free to BeThe Hungarian Pikler-Loczy Institute for Infants’ Well-being and Healthy Development could not have been created without the fundamental contribution of the Budapest School’s approach to Object Relations. For historical reasons, there is very little known in psychoanalytical circles about this extraordinary experience.The space for partnership and reciprocity, and space for “true” autonomy, is an original model created by Pikler, with central importance given to the baby’s self-initiated motor development: “freedom to move”.We will present video sequences of this universe of solicitude. The atmosphere of this world around babies is en resonance with Ferenczi’s reflections in his Clinical Diary, and what he “dreamed” of as the necessity of a caring early environment provided through adult tenderness.Kathleen Kelley-Lainé - Freedom to Grow: Inspired by Ferenczi’s Clinical DiaryThis paper will explore how psychoanalysis can create a space in which immature, infantile psychic processes can be identified, elaborated and transformed, enabling the subject to emerge. A clinical example will illustrate the case of a young woman who after three years in analysis was able to break free of archaic, infantile fantasies and develop her career as a musician.
