ABSTRACT
The concept of a Confusion of Tongues was developed to understand a situation in which a patient, for his or her own reasons, confuses a child’s need for affection with a demand for sexual satisfaction. Ferenczi’s introduction of this concept suggests the need for a reevaluation of the psychoanalytic concept of infantile sexuality. The Freudian concept of infantile sexuality can represent the imposition of adult preoccupation on children’s experience. Instead of saying Freud discovered infantile sexuality, one can say that he imputed sexuality to an infant, thinking of it as similar to adult sexuality, although not necessarily in the genitals. Classical psychoanalysis may be suffering from a Confusion of Tongues in its application of a vocabulary developed for the analyses of adults to the understanding of children and adolescents. In understanding the difference that the Confusion of Tongues makes, it redefines the experience as a desire for tenderness which transformed the encounter from a sexual to an affectionate one.
