Select Page

A child is killed

by | Vol 25 (1) 2007

The author begins his argument by confronting child murder in the real: in clinical work, in the media, in historical accounts of rituals. Studying ritual child murder within the Inca culture, together with stories of child murder throughout history, allows the author to draw some initial parallels between ritualistic child murder and its treatment in the clinic. A Winnicottian reading of the genesis of the subject, with narcissism as a central focus, provides a framework for understanding this kind of aggression in the clinic. Taking into consideration the effects of being able to psychically represent, we learn that fantasmatic, real and ritual murder of a child is embedded in the structure brought about by the entrance into language.

Related articles

  • Child Psychosis and Therapeutic Mediation

    The originality of the setting in which therapeutic mediation techniques, for example, painting, pottery, modelling, are employed in child psychosis rests in the fact that the child can thus engage with an attempt at representation based on sensory modalities. These include the child's own sensorimotor aspects and the sensorial qualities of the "malleable medium". The manner in which he or she makes use of this is part of the transference dynamics. The clinician must therefore extend his or her capacity…

  • The Play-Drive and the Cosmic Child

    Starting from the concept of a "play-drive" as introduced by Friedrich Schiller in his Letters on Aesthetic Education, the present study explores this concept at the interface of the crossroads between philosophy, anthropology, and aesthetics. In order to grasp what may be called the "space" of these phenomena, reflection must engage the relationship between Ancients and Moderns as well, to show that the figure of "the child" in Nietzsche and Heraclitus is apt to give its full dimension to Schiller's…

  • The Function of the Gaze and the Mother-Child Relationship in the Subjectification of a Physically Disabled Child

    Physically disabled children suffer from the gaze of the people they meet and with whom they interact. They are confronted with their difference and are obliged to take up a position against this confrontation. First, through a review of relevant literature the author characterizes the gaze in the relation between a physically disabled child and the Other. The child's identity is shaped through what is offered by others. At birth a child is positioned in the family, at the point…