10. Recovery of the Aesthetic Object

Surely it is a rare thing in the development of a child for the original passionate response to the beauty of the world and of the mother, her breast and her face as the objects of its passion (but also the symbols of the experience), to remain undiminished. The various stations in development at which the sensibility to beauty and the engagement in the aesthetic conflict are partially, or sometimes totally, sacrificed can be arranged in a characteristic list: prolonged separations, physical illnesses, weaning, birth of the next baby, the advent of social experiences (crèche, school, etc.) To this list of experiences which have a certain traumatic impact we must add the great continual factor of the family culture. Every family is divided in its ethos to some extent between the task of helping children to develop their individuality and the intention of training them for obedience to the adaptational demands of the community at large. This pressure towards obedience, sanctified as it is in all sorts of irrefutable ways, offers the child a ready-made escape from feeling and thinking for himself. The most striking example is the loss of imagination and emotional vibrance in the latency period of adaptation to the requirements of school-type education.

Analytic experience seconds these pessimistic expectations; regardless of the absence of psychopathology or the excellence of character of patients or candidates, the blunting of sensibilities and the narrowing of the range of emotionality is demonstrated. In the process of their recovery the damping of responsiveness and joy becomes apparent even if invisible beforehand. In the course of the analysis of a large percentage of our patients, who have come to analysis for reasons of character rather than symptomatology of a debilitating sort, the recovery of aesthetic sensibilities is of a rather quiet nature, having a noticeable crescendo only at the theshold of the depressive position and during the weaning process. But in