ABSTRACT
Imagine an infant immersed in the chora, still in the psychic space where there is not yet any differentiation between child and mother and surroundings, where all needs are met with no discernible delay, where there is plenitude and so no need for language. There is nothing to call for, no need to distinguish between subject and object, no need to speak. Now imagine the child losing her mother. Perhaps her mother is killed in an accident, or is hospitalized, or recedes into depression. The mother fades away before the child knows that this mother was an other. The child suffers a loss she cannot articulate. Later, she will learn language and the name “mother,” but she loses her mother before she has this ability to name. She suffers before she can speak. She may well recover and have a normal childhood, but then, later in life, perhaps in her early twenties as a result of some trauma, she may sink deep into depression, a depression that far exceeds the immediate trouble that precipitated it. She is listless; she moves slowly; she sleeps most of the day; she barely speaks.
