Mother Tongue and the Language of Tenderness: Lost and Found

This paper explores the impact of early aesthetic experiences on the developing psyche. The sound bath in the environment experienced by the fetus and then newborn is registered as implicit memory in the non-repressed unconscious and imparts a sense of belonging or alienation, depending on the nature of the early maternal object relations. In the case of the child, displaced from the early mothering culture by flight and emigration, an added stress is acculturation and loss of the familiar sights, sounds, smells of the homely culture, but also the loss of musicality of the language. The clinical material will illustrate how an alienated youth was able to belatedly mourn the loss of his mother tongue and culture after he was drawn back to visit his birthplace. The aesthetic experiencing of his hometown's native culture and learning of his early life experiences from his caretakers opened crypts of past traumas long buried and led him to explore the nether regions of his mind in analysis. The paper also argues that it was the patient's self-preservative instinct that led him to search for his past. The work of construction and reconstruction in the analysis provided him with a narrative that animated his weakened life instinct providing him with renewed meaning and purpose in his life.