ABSTRACT
As the boundaries and limits of the Ego are being established as a two-dimensional interface leaning anaclitically on tactile sensations, the Self is constituted by introjecting the world of sound—and taste and smell—as a pre-individual psychical cavity endowed with a rudimentary unity and identity. The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is: to provide this hetero-stimulation by appropriate adjustments of the analytic setting and by being determined to symbolise in place of the patient, whenever the latter’s mind goes blank; and to let the transference bring out past flaws in the self and present uncertainties in the coherence and boundaries of the Ego, so that both parties can work on them analytically. The idea of a “bath” of spoken words emanating from people in the baby’s caring environment does not appear in Freud’s work. On the other hand, in the “Project for a scientific psychology” of 1895, he assigns a significant role to the baby’s crying.
