ABSTRACT
The following essay draws on many themes that I am sure Joe Noshpitz enjoyed investigating. He tells of the loss of the seamless self of infancy that fades with the acquisition of language; of the domains of feeling that can never again be accessed once the child takes on verbal capacity; of the malleability of language in use as prose and poetry. These themes are all discussed within the idiom of developmental theory and as a remarkably sophisticated parse on Freudian ideas concerning inner and outer life as well as a commentary on infantile mirroring and its effect on the growing child’s capacity to experience, tolerate, and express emotions.
