The generalized child and the typewriter of singularities

Abstract

More than ever, we observe a growing tendency to diagnose disorders and deficits in children. Guided by the principles of Lacanian psychoanalysis—which operates through listening and speech—this article proposes a discussion on the analyst's work with these subjects, going against the grain of such recurrent labels and identifications. Although there is a historical tendency, especially in the context of child analysis, to pedagogize and therapize the subject, we propose a shift in this perspective. The child—as the subject of childhood—undergoes fundamental transitions during this period, from the appropriation of language and entry into the discourse of culture, to the structuring that takes place through the interplay of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. It is this very subject who, despite prevailing imperatives, resists and denounces the processes of imaginarization and the search for meaning imposed upon their bodies and functioning, producing a rupture in the sideration brought about by such discourses.