ABSTRACT
S. Ferenczi put forward the idea of a confusion of tongues between the adult’s language and the child’s language. This confusion is held to be at the origin of the psychical trauma caused by an adult’s sexual abuse of a child. For Ferenczi, the child speaks the language of tenderness, whereas the perverse adult speaks the language of passion. W. R. Bion’s ideas concerning the analyst’s emotional/affective participation were forged in his work with groups. He would, thus, share with the group, by way of an analytic intervention, the feelings that he was experiencing at this or that particular moment. In her book, Seule, une femme, J. Kristeva turns her attention to maternal passion. For J. L. Donnet, in order to have an effect an interpretation must communicate something of the analyst’s engagement in the situation. He writes, “The foundational dysymmetry is corrected to some degree by the manifestation of a certain reciprocity”.
