ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how psychoanalysis might perhaps reinvigorate the desire for knowledge so that, as Colette Soler suggests, we might "reinvent or renew the practice in circumstances that were always adverse". It argues that children's symptoms seem to be related to the latest configurations of western societies, most obvious in the power and persistence of the marketing technologies, or psycho-technologies of consumer capitalism. Soler's claim is that the symptoms of childhood suffering come from the socio-cultural sphere where today's families strive for "some sham surplus jouissance, without any transcendence, and the ineptitude of scraping a living within the balance of producer-consumer". The psychoanalytic understanding of children and childhood symptoms now confronts complex new technologies and the global marketplace. Children's symptoms shout out that a child should never be reduced to being a consumer with purchasing power; and that role must continue to uphold their dignity and singularity.
