The Infantile, A Living Force

It is indeed a great pleasure for me to pen a response to Adela Abella’s Letter to the Editor entitled “The infantile: More than Hilflosigkeit?” The letter is a deep and at the same time open reflection on the theme of the 52nd Congress of the IPA, the title of which was “The Infantile”, and the debates that took place during the first online meeting of the IPA in the last two weeks of July this year.

The text addresses directly the discussions we had choosing the theme of the Congress, especially as one of the first issues that came up was that in some languages - English, for example - the word “infantile” has a negative connotation pointing as it can to, for instance, immature behaviour. Moreover, there seem to have been differences over the translation of the term “infantile”, and both issues are addressed by Adela in her letter. Taking all of the considerations into account, however, we came to the conclusion that the concept has different meanings in different cultures and that this questioning could itself form part of the debate to take place.

But let me say something about how we came to choose this topic for the congress in the first place. On the one hand, the choice followed on from “The Feminine”, the topic of the 2019 Congress in London, in the sense that it was an attempt to stimulate the process of conceptualization of the terminology that we psychoanalysts use in our debates and publications, something that often happens while ignoring the cloud of meanings which surround each term.

On the other hand, we came to the conclusion that the linguistic questions linked to “the infantile” should form part of the debate at the heart of the congress as those questions appeared to go beyond the semantic, opening up other paths of investigation and discussion.

Yet another reason for the choice of the title was that, as a child analyst, I firmly believe that analytic work with children makes an invaluable contribution to psychoanalytic work with patients of all age