ABSTRACT
Here, the author elaborates on the figure of the witness, essential to the parental function. In the economy of sensations, the parent is required to stand witness on several levels. First, he creates the sensation: by interpreting a scream or certain movements, he introduces the child to the universe of signs, he identifies his sensation, and attests to it. He then acts as a witness by connecting the child’s sensation to a specific event, and finally by helping to inscribe the event into a sequence that links past, present and future. At each of these stages a failing can occur; the younger the child concerned, the greater its consequences will be.
A sensation comes into being provided the child finds next to him a witness who becomes the messenger between his body and his psyche. In the absence of such a witness, only the body keeps a record of the blocked out event.
In this chapter, Réfabert also discusses Freud’s friendship with Fliess, and its disastrous ending, using it to illustrate the fate of children born to living-dead parents. A parent who has unknowingly suffered soul murder has a child in order to take refuge in him. With Freud, Fliess acted like the parent who, in order to survive his psychic death, holds onto the child, turning him into his possession. Fliess gave himself life through Freud by presenting himself as his irreplaceable protector.
