“What Do his Lips Want from Me?” Infantile Sexuality and Enigmatic Messages in Psychoanalytic Parent–Infant Psychotherapy

This paper’s clinical material derives from psychoanalytic parent–infant psychotherapy (PIP). It applies Freud’s concept of infantile sexuality to clinical processes in PIP. Freud’s sources were everyday baby observations and adult patients’ childhood accounts. He was unclear as to when infantile sexuality emerged in babies, claiming it was observable in the newborn as well as unobservable only until about three years of age. Furthermore, he argued that the sexual drive leant on the survival instinct, thereby adding erotic pleasure to breastfeeding. This process remained unclear until Laplanche suggested a traffic of enigmatic messages in dyadic interactions. Their meanings were unconscious to the adult and incomprehensible to the baby. The paper investigates if the baby might experience certain communicative expressions as especially enigmatic. It applies an observational and interpretative method, layered analysis, to a clip of a video-recorded PIP session. It shows the analyst approaching a gaze-avoidant baby by greeting and smiling. These efforts were conscious to him. In contrast, as his lips made two kiss-like motions they were unconscious to him and retroactively interpreted as signifying his infantile sexuality. The paper discusses if such micro-events correspond to Laplanche’s enigmatic messages.