THE CHILD AND HIS MOTHER
In asserting that the seat of consciousness in a young infant is in the
abdomen, we do not pretend to suggest that all the other
conscious-centers are utterly dormant. Once a child is born, the whole
nervous and cerebral system comes awake, even the brain’s memories begin
to glimmer, recognition and cognition soon begin to take place. But the
spontaneous control and all the prime developing activity derive from
the great affective centers of the abdomen. In the solar plexus is the
first great fountain and issue of infantile consciousness. There,
beneath the navel, lies the active human first-mind, the prime
unconscious. From the moment of conception, when the first nucleus is
formed, to the moment of death, when this same nucleus breaks again, the
first great active center of human consciousness lies in the solar
plexus.
The movement of development in any creature is, however, towards a
florescent individuality. The ample, mature, unfolded individual stands
perfect, perfect in himself, but also perfect in his harmonious relation
to those nearest him and to all the universe. Whilst only the one great
center of consciousness is awake, in the abdomen, the infant has no
separate existence, his whole nature is contained in the conjunction
with the parent. As soon as the complementary negative pole arouses the
voluntary center of the lumbar ganglion, there is at once a retraction
into independence and an assertion of singleness. The back strengthens
itself.
But still the circuit of polarity, dual as it is, positive and negative
from the positive-sympathetic and the negative-voluntary poles, still
depends on the duality of two beings—it is still extra-individual. Each
individual is vitally dependent on the other, for the life circuit.
Let us consider for a moment the _kind_ of consciousness manifested at
the two great primary centers. At the solar plexus the new psyche acts
in a mode of attractive vitalism, drawing its objective unto itself as
by vital magnetism. Here it drinks in, as it were, the contiguous
universe, as during the womb-period it drank from the living continuum
of the mother. It is darkly self-centered, exultant and positive in its
own existence. It is all-in-all to itself, its own great subject. It
knows no objective. It only knows its own vital potency, which potency
draws the external object unto itself, subjectively, as the blood-stream
was drawn into the fœtus, by subjective attraction. Here the psyche is
to itself the _All_. Blindly self-positive.
This is the first mode of consciousness for every living
thing—fascinating in all young things. The second half of the same mode
commences as soon as direct activity sets up in the lumbar ganglion.
Then the psyche recoils upon itself, in its first reaction against
continuity with the outer universe. It recoils even against its own mode
of assimilatory unison. Even it must break off, interrupt the great
psychic-assimilation process which goes on at the sympathic center. It
must recoil clean upon itself, break loose from any attachment
whatsoever. And then it must try its _power_, often playfully.
This reaction is still subjective. When a child stiffens and draws away,
when it screams with pure temper, it takes no note of that from which it
recoils. It has no objective consciousness of that from which it reacts,
the mother principally. It is like a swimmer endlessly kicking the water
away behind him, with strong legs vividly active from the spinal
ganglia. Like a man in a boat pushing off from the shore, it merely
thrusts away, in order to ride free, ever more free. It is a purely
subjective motion, in the negative direction.
After our long training in objectivation, and our epoch of worship of
the objective mode, it is perhaps difficult for us to realize the
strong, blind power of the unconscious on its first plane of activity.
It is something quite different from what we call _egoism_—which is
really mentally derived—for the ego is merely the sum-total of what we
_conceive_ ourselves to be. The powerful pristine subjectivity of the
unconscious on its first plane is, on the other hand, the root of all
our consciousness and being, darkly tenacious. Here we are grounded, say
what we may. And if we break the spell of this first subjective mode, we
break our own main root and live rootless, shiftless, groundless.
So that the powerful subjectivity of the unconscious, where the self is
all-in-all unto itself, active in strong desirous _psychic_ assimilation
or in direct repudiation of the contiguous universe; this first plane of
psychic activity, polarized in the solar plexus and the lumbar ganglion
of each individual but established in a circuit with the corresponding
poles of another individual: this is the first scope of life and being
for every human individual, and is beyond question. But we must again
remark that the whole circuit is established between _two_
individuals—that neither is a free thing-unto-itself—and that the very
fact of established polarity between the two maintains that
correspondence between the individual entity and the external universe
which is the clue to all growth and development. The pure subjectivity
of the first plane of consciousness is no more _selfish_ than the pure
objectivity of any other plane. How can it be? How can any form of pure,
balanced polarity between two vital individuals be in any sense selfish
on the part of one individual? We have got our moral values all wrong.
Save for healthy instinct, the moralistic human race would have
exterminated itself long ago. And yet man _must_ be moral, at the very
root moral. The essence of morality is the basic desire to preserve the
perfect correspondence between the self and the object, to have no
trespass and no breach of integrity, nor yet any refaulture in the
vitalistic interchange.
As yet we see the unconscious active on one plane only and entirely
dependent on _two_ individuals. But immediately following the
establishment of the circuit of the powerful, subjective, abdominal
plane comes the quivering of the whole system into a new degree of
consciousness. And two great upper centers are awake.
The diaphragm really divides the human body, psychically as well as
organically. The two centers beneath the diaphragm are centers of dark
subjectivity, centripetal, assimilative. Once these are established, in
the thorax the two first centers of objective consciousness become
active, with ever-increasing intensity. The great thoracic sympathetic
plexus rouses like a sun in the breast, the thoracic ganglion fills the
shoulders with strength. There are now two planes of primary
consciousness—the first, the lower, the subjective unconscious, active
beneath the diaphragm, and the second upper, objective plane, active
above the diaphragm, in the breast.
Let us realize that the subjective and objective of the unconscious are
not the same as the subjective and the objective of the _mind_. Here we
have no concepts to deal with, no static objects in the shape of ideas.
We have none of that tiresome business of establishing the relation
between the mind and its own ideal object, or the discriminating between
the ideal thing-in-itself and the mind of which it is the content. We
are spared that hateful thing-in-itself, the idea, which is at once so
all-important and so _nothing_. We are on straightforward solid ground;
there is no abstraction.
The unconscious subjectivity is, in its positive manifestation, a great
imbibing, and in its negative, a definite blind rejection. What we call
an _unconscious_ rejection. This subjectivity embraces alike creative
emotion and physical function. It includes alike the sweet and
untellable communion of love between the mother and child, the
irrational reaction into separation between the two, and also the
physical functioning of sucking and urination. Psychic and physical
development run parallel, though they are forever distinct. The child
sucking, the child urinating, this is the child acting from the great
_subjective_ centers, positive and negative. When the child sucks, there
is a sympathetic circuit between it and the mother, in which the
sympathetic plexus in the mother acts as negative or submissive pole to
the corresponding plexus in the child. In urination there is a
corresponding circuit in the voluntary centers, so that a mother seems
gratified, and _is_ gratified, inevitably, by the excremental
functioning of her child. She experiences a true polar reaction.
Child and mother have, in the first place, no objective consciousness of
each other, and certainly no _idea_ of each other. Each is a blind
desideratum to the other. The strong love between them is effectual in
the great abdominal centers, where all love, real love, is primarily
based. Of that reflected or moon-love, derived from the head, that
spurious form of love which predominates to-day, we do not speak here.
It has its root in the _idea_: the beloved is a mental objective,
endlessly appreciated, criticized, scrutinized, exhausted. This has
nothing to do with the active unconscious.
Having realized that the unconscious sparkles, vibrates, travels in a
strong subjective stream from the abdominal centers, connecting the
child directly with the mother at corresponding poles of vitalism, we
realize that the unconscious contains nothing ideal, nothing in the
least conceptual, and hence nothing in the least personal, since
personality, like the ego, belongs to the conscious or mental-subjective
self. So the first analyses are, or should be, so impersonal that the
so-called _human_ relations are not involved. The first relationship is
neither personal nor biological—a fact which psychoanalysis has not
succeeded in grasping.
For example. A child screams with terror at the touch of fur; another
child loves the touch of fur, and purrs with pleasure. How now? Is it a
complex? Did the father have a beard?
It is possible. But all-too-human. The physical result of rubbing
fur is to set up a certain amount of frictional electricity.
Frictional electricity is one of the sundering forces. It
corresponds to the voluntary forces exerted at the lower spinal
ganglia, the forces of anger and retraction into independence and
power. An over-sympathetic child will scream with fear at the touch
of fur; a refractory child will purr with pleasure. It is a reaction
which involves even deeper things than sex—the primal constitution
of the elementary psyche. A sympathetically overbalanced child has a
horror of the electric-frictional force such as is emitted from the
fur of a black cat, creature of rapacity. The same delights a
fierce-willed child.
But we must admit at the same time that from earliest days a child is
subject to the definite _conscious_ psychic influences of
its surroundings and will react almost automatically to a
conscious-passional suggestion from the mother. In this way personal sex
is prematurely evoked, and real complexes are set up. But these derive
not from the spontaneous unconscious. They are in a way dictated from
the deliberate, mental consciousness, even if involuntarily. Again they
are a result of _mental_ subjectivity, self-consciousness—so different
from the primal subjectivity of the unconscious.
To return, however, to the pure unconscious. When the upper centers
flash awake, a whole new field of consciousness and spontaneous activity
is opened out. The great sympathetic plexus of the breast is the heart’s
mind. This thoracic plexus corresponds directly in the upper man to the
solar plexus in the lower. But it is a correspondence in creative
opposition. From the sympathetic center of the breast as from a window
the unconscious goes forth seeking its object, to dwell upon it. When a
child leans its breast against its mother it becomes filled with a
primal awareness of _her_—not of itself desiring her or partaking of
her—but of her as she is in herself. This is the first great acquisition
of primal objective knowledge, the objective content of the unconscious.
Such knowledge we call the treasure of the heart. When the ancients
located the first seat of consciousness in the heart, they were neither
misguided nor playing with metaphor. For by consciousness they meant, as
usual, objective consciousness only. And from the cardiac plexus goes
forth that strange effluence of the self which seeks and dwells upon the
beloved, lovingly roving like the fingers of an infant or a blind man
over the face of the treasured object, gathering her mould into itself
and transferring her mould forever into its own deep unconscious psyche.
This is the first acquiring of objective knowledge, sightless,
unspeakably direct. It is a dwelling of the child’s unconscious within
the form of the mother, the gathering of a pure, eternal impression. So
the soul stores itself with dynamic treasures; it verily builds its own
tissue of such treasure, the tissue of the developing body, each cell
stored with creative dynamic content.
The breasts themselves are as two eyes. We do not know how much the
nipples of the breast, both in man and woman, serve primarily as poles
of vital _conscious_ effluence and connection. We do not know how the
nipples of the breast are as fountains leaping into the universe, or as
little lamps irradiating the contiguous world, to the soul in quest.
But certainly from the passional conscious-center of the breast goes
forth the first joyous discovery of the beloved, the first objective
discovery of the contiguous universe, the first ministration of the self
to that which is beyond the self. So, functionally, the mother ministers
with the milk of her breast. But this is a yielding to the great _lower_
plexus, the basic solar plexus. It is the breast as part also of the
alimentary system—a special thing.
In sucking the hands also come awake. It is strange to notice the
pictures by the old masters of the Madonna and Child. Sometimes the
strange round belly of the Infant seems the predominant mystery-center,
and sometimes from the tiny breast it is as if a delicate light glowed,
the light of love. As if the breast should illumine the outer world in
its seeking administering love. As if the breast of the Infant glimmered
its light of discovery on the adoring Mother, and she bowed, submissive
to the revelation.
The little hands and arms wave, circulate, trying to touch, to grasp, to
know. To grasp in caress, not to reive. To grasp in order to identify
themselves with the cherished discovery, to realize the beloved. To
cherish, to realize the beloved. To administer the outward-seeking self
to the beloved. We give this the exclusive name of love. But it is
indeed only the one direction of love, the outgoing from the lovely
center of the breast—the nipples seeking, the hands delicately,
caressively exploring, the eyes at last waking to perception. The eyes,
the hands, these wake and are alert from the center of the breast. But
the ears and feet move from the deep lower centers—the recipient ears,
imbibing vibrations, the feet which press the resistant earth,
controlled from the powerful lower ganglia of the spine. And thus great
scope of activity opens, in the hands that wave and explore, the eyes
that try to perceive, the legs, the little knees that thrust, thrust
away, the small feet that curl and twinkle upon themselves, ready for
the obstinate earth.
And so, also a wholeness is established within the individual. The two
fields of consciousness, the first upper and the first lower, are based
upon a correspondence of polarity. The first great complex circuit is
now set up _within the individual_, between the upper and lower centers.
The individual consciousness has now its own integral independent
existence and activity, apart from external connection. It has its right
to be alone.