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.

Chara Stephanou 

If birth physically separates the infant from the mother, why does Lacan suggest that subjective separation depends upon the possibility of the mother’s absence—and that anxiety arises when this possibility is obstructed? Drawing on Lacan’s Seminar X, my questions in this cartel examine the breast as an amboceptor and the distinction between the point of desire and the anxiety-point. It proposes that subjective separation is not achieved through physical distance alone, but through an interval in the infant’s relation to the maternal Other within which lack—and therefore desire—can emerge.

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.

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