A clinical case

from the generalized child to the subject in its singularity

Abstract

The clinical case of a five-year-old child, brought to analysis because he can't hear or speak, illustrates a discursive shift from the place this child occupies in the scientific-capitalist discourse – object of study, “generalized child” – to the place he occupies in the analyst's discourse – subject of desire, capable of sustaining his singularity. The clinical case shows that in the discourse of science – instituted in the university discourse – knowledge, the agent of power and domination, focuses on the other, a place that this child occupies as object a, object of science, object of the Other's jouissance, objectified child, “generalized child”; but the analyst's discourse shifts the child, until then crystallized in the place of object a, to the place of subject, revealing that beyond the maturation of the human organism lies the subject of the unconscious, who subjectivates, who gives his own singular meaning to the phenomena of his body.