There is a Cat on the Couch

In this article we will explain our view of the cat and what we project ourselves onto the cat. Sometimes we repair ourselves through the cat, and from a psychoanalytic point of view, it is as if we start again with an infant's psyche development. However, when we look at a cat's relationship with us, it only uses its eyes and body; its feeling is limited, it does not have a “language” in terms of speech, and it makes us feel helpless, evoking the infant psyche. For this reason, the article will start with a short description of the baby's psyche development and end with a case in which we explain the cat's place in the session.

After a baby is born, it has its own dominance in its relationship with the world. Neither he/she nor the “other” literally exists. Instead, there is the “thing” that feeds and nurses it. There is no object nor subject, and the baby is still at the presymbolic level in this period. Ogden defines this period as an autistic contiguous position (Ogden,1989). In this position, the infant experiences a feeling of disintegration, disengagement, and anxiety. The infant experiences its mother's voice, touch, and, most importantly, its mother's gaze during this period in his relationship. For the infant, there are no feelings in this period but sensations that it cannot transform.

The infant must constantly look into the mother's eyes to increase the mother's inclusiveness. By looking into its mother's eyes and responding to its touches, the infant builds a stimulus barrier for itself and becomes a self-organized creature by making its container over time. Meanwhile, the mother translates the beta elements from the infant with the alpha function. While the sensations of the infant transform the feelings, Babblings begin to turn into language, and language enters the mother-infant relationship as a third. With the emergence of sounds and words, the child attempts to define itself, yielding to the rules of authority and losing itself, losing its original