One day, in 1996, with a leap from adjective to noun, a new concept arose within psychoanalytic thought: the Infantile. This term remained so pertinent over time that it has become the core of the title of the 52nd IPA Congress.

Florence Guignard was the author who first formulated it in such an accomplished form, and in today's episode she draws  important clinical consequences from the theoretical reflection on this concept concerning the analytic relationship and the interpretative activity of the psychoanalyst in their daily work.

The Infantile -with a capital “I”- is  a limit-concept, which aims at describing a "flexible" structure, at the limits of our animality, at the borders of our Unconscious and our Preconscious system. Being the first and main means of organization of our Ego drives, the Infantile is also the place of our primary fantasies and of the mnemonic traces of our first sensory-motor experiences. It is the most acute point of our emotions and feelings in their non-verbal state.

Florence Guignard describes how the patient’s Infantile and the analyst’s Infantile are interweaving in the transference-countertransference situation, as beautifully illustrated by Mikael Vilchez artistic creation, enriched by Rhoda Bawdekar’s interpretation of it. Florence Guignard shows us how the Infantile can serve as a lever in the case of blind spots and stopper interpretations.

A clinical example of a blind spot in the analyst will be published in the second volume of “Psychoanalytic Concepts and Technique in Development. The psychoanalyst in the city”.

Florence Guignard is a Swiss and French psychoanalyst, Training analyst of the Paris Society and a direct member of the IPA for the Training in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis. She co-founded the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis.

She is an internationally renowned author and since 1970 her work, translated into several languages, notably on female sexuality and the child, has contrìbuted significantly to the renewal of psychoanalytical thought.

link to the paper https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UC1QF8Yirl8CZ5i42rWwTxvD5_qfwc5B/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=112457875385152358388&rtpof=true&sd=true

This episode is available also in French

Credits