ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the traumatic effects of encountering the disability from the perspective of the bond and psychic transmission. It explores the effects of failure in transmission as induced by the disability, as well as the specific features of bonds and transmissions that it generates, permits, or reveals over time. The chapter describes the effect of the break in filiation, the effect of the primal disappointment, with the host of violent feelings that accompany it, and also the effect of sudden and early psychic separation. It focuses on the affects of guilt and shame the trauma mobilises, and the psychic work these affects produce. The chapter also considers transmissions of the affects of guilt and shame, with the “affect bearing” function the child can fulfil. It examines the disability as an attractor, for the child as for those around it, of transmissions, identifications, and conflicts relating to oedipal, archaic and narcissistic, issues.
