Chapter 2 The Primal Process and the Pictogram

I have said that the distinctive characteristic of each process of metabolisation, activated by the encounter between psychical space and the space outside the psyche, is defined by the specificity of the relational model imposed on the elements of the represented, a model that is a copy of the structural schema of the representative itself. In the phase that I am analysing, all the productions of the psychical activity will conform to the postulate of self-procreation. In my analysis, I distinguish between what concerns the pleasure—unpleasure economy proper to that postulate and what concerns the particular characteristic of the represented that it produces: the pictogram.

I have said that the primal encounter is played out, in theory, at the very moment of birth, but that we may shift the moment forward, situating it at the first, inaugural experience of pleasure: the encounter between mouth and breast. When I speak of the primal moment, or of the primal encounter, I am referring to that starting point. That shift forward will be compensated for, by a movement in the opposite direction, when I come to speak of the I, the agency that the discourse of the Other anticipates in a much more obvious way.

If we remain on the side of the infant, we may isolate a series of factors responsible for the organisation of psychical activity in the phase under consideration:

1 The presence of a body whose property is to preserve its state of energetic equilibrium by self-regulation. Any break in this state will be manifested in an unknowable experience, an x that, in the deferred action of language, is called pain. Any appearance of this experience triggers off, when possible, a reaction aimed at eliminating its cause. This reaction, which derives from the homeostasis of the system, eludes all knowledge on the part of the psyche. The psyche is nevertheless informed of a possible state of pain in the body, to which it reacts by the only action it is