The confusion of tongues between children and adults described by Ferenczi can be analysed today in the light of Jean Laplanche's work on generalised seduction and enigmatic messages. It can also be understood, from a post-Kleinian perspective, in terms of a confusion of zones and modes, as identified by Donald Meltzer in the analysis of psychotic or borderline patients, or in the analysis of profoundly regressed children. These confusions concern the erogenous zones and their modes of functioning in part-object relations, and thus prevent the containing function from functioning adequately.