ABSTRACT
Nothing, Réfabert says, is as close to us and nothing is our own more than this unexpected thing at the core of our being, the unconscious. And he goes on to say: “In truth, my willingness to consent to the shock of this unforeseen/unprecedented thing which sometimes grabs hold of me by surprise—this willingness is what makes me an analyst with certain patients. This is what Bion means when he speaks of the analyst’s capacity for breakdown. I understand this capacity to be the willingness of the analyst to let himself be taken back to the brink of breakdown, where one gasps for breath, at the edge of the bottomless depth on which he undertakes to build.”
In this chapter, the author is accompanied by Henri Maldiney, who “focuses on a level before perception, in the zone of the pathic. Maldiney’s phenomenology originates in sensation. His reasoning is grounded on rhythm, when he speaks of the originary”. In Maldiney’s writing, form and rhythm are associated in the work of conceiving the subject, a form constantly evolving. The condition necessary for the infans to recognise all the parts of his body and all his functions, so that all affects can be inscribed in him—this condition is that the Nebenmensch remain in rhythmic concertation with him. Rhythm is the way in which the one “next to” the child shows that he is there and that he can be there again.
