Parent Child Alterity Dialogue

echaniCf Imns.

dison: Univer. note 2.

Parent, Child, Alterity, Dialogue

( the Tower of • 1935). p. 14.

David Kennedy

ing.

Irans. John

v York: Harper

llingen: Verlag 'he Phi/o.rophi-

"De ire for the new in us is the desire for the other:' Emmanuel Levina

ert Leslie Elli >bertson (Lon-

The dult-Child Situation and the Plural Self

I Science and search in Phe~it/iche Na(ur-

The adult-child ituation is paradigmatic of alterity, both p ychologically and ethically. For the child, it i literally the first relation with the other. For the parent. it i also a fir t relation hip: the first time one ha been on the other side. acro s from one's childhood. Facing my child. I am till the child I was. but now I am in my parents' place. I wa once a child with my own parent just like this. I am till that child, yet here is another child before me. ow I, who e identity was intersubjectively con tituted in my fir t relationship, am the fir t relationship-the agent of constitution-for another. It i obvious that thi relationship in it intricate geometry of projection and introjections will shape the child before me. But is there a way in which I will be shaped by it a an adult? Is it a way of coming into a different relation hip with the child that I was and till am a constituted by another? It seems clear to us what the possibilities for the psychological development of the child are. What are the po ibilities for the adult? How do adults grow p ychologically through their relations with their own children. The child-adult relation po es complicated problem for our understanding of personal identity. We assume the profound influence on the identity of the child by the parent. but lack a way to approach how the child hape adult subjectivity. Thi relative ignorance may be a result both of adult egocentrism and of an inequality-the child has no choice but to be shaped, wherea the adult can reject being shaped. But rejecting being haped i being shaped negatively-in turning away from the transformative potentia) of thi relation, he turns away from coming to term with her own childhood through parenthood, and therefore

'id.. pp. 1-2. p.

PHILOSOPHY TODAY

from a crucial dimen ion of adult development Many testify to the experience of a profound en e of interior relocation connected with having children. Levina (1969) con idered that the child-adult relation hip disprove the common en e notion of the unity of per onal identity. He aid. In a ituation uch a paternity the return of the I the elf. which is et forth in the monist concepl of the identical subject. is found to be completely modified. The son is not only my work. like a poem or an object. nor is he my propert . eilher the categories of power nor tho e of knowledge de cribe my relation with the child.. .. [ do not have my child: I am my child. Paternity i a relation with a tranger Who while being Other is me. a relation of Ihe elf wiLh a self which is yet not me. In thi "I am" being is no longer Eleatic unity. In exi ting itself there is a multiplicity and a tran cendence. In this transcendence the I i not swept away. since the son is nOt me: and yet I am my on. The fecundity of the I is its very transcendence. (p. 277) 10

The realization of the "fecundity of the I"-the existential experience of the multiplicity of elfhood-is the first outcome of becoming a parent. Early in life one becomes an other to oneself, for the reflective elf originates in a split. or doubling of con ciousness. But in becoming a parent thi otherne s-whichis-also-myself is uddenly found out there in the world. in another human. Compared to other adults. the child i a radical other-a tiny per on who cannot quite peak one's language. and who depend on me to urvive. One does not "have" this other, nor i thi other oneself. but one is thi other. Thi i a powerful image of alterity which ha the effect of what Levinas (1987, p. 17) call the "rupture of the egoi t-I, ' and its "reconditioning in the face of the Other, the re-oriemation despite-it elf of the for-itself to the for-the-other. ' The rupture and reconditioning provide the context for the

SPRl G 2001

33

psychological development of the adult through her relation hip with the child-a development ba ed on the experience of alterit and dialogue. For the adult it i a moment-often the first-of the problematization of elfhood, through realizing in the mo t concrete, compelling way po ible that ubjecti ity and the experience of alterity are in eparable. Child-rearing breaks open identity, ith the promi e it reorganization acro the boundaries of the ubject. The relation with the chi Id is the grand and primary instance of the ontology of person -in-relation, which combine self-unity, othemes and projection~r the mean through which we find and define ourselve in the other. In having children, I am confronted with the fact that the elf i not ju t a multiple structure, but a structure which transcends the boundarie between myel f and others. In the modern We t, the goal of p ychological development i typically de cribed with words like individuation. autonomy. differentiation. and self-actualization. Our teleolog of elf-development assumes a discrete elf, a el f cl arly within its own boundarie -other for• ations are often con idered pathological. For thi culture of radical individuali m. the role of the other in the pur uit of thi goal ha been unclear. It i onl in the last third of our century that adulthood has generally been considered to be an thing but an end to development-a terminus of childhood. If development continued in adulthood. it wa thought of as the result of elf-impo ed technologie of growth-what Foucault (19 6) refer to a "the care of the self." Although the notion of lifelong development wa implicit in the ri e of psychoanalytic thought, it i the arne notion-"therapy" "education," and "care of the elf' are all analogous term. The implication here is that one develop naturall in childhood but in adulthood one doe 0 onl through technologies of the elf. So Freud refer to p ychoanalysi as "a prolongation of education for the purpo e of overcoming the re idue of childhood' (1957 Vol. lip. 48). It was Jung, with hi global notion of the onet of a psychological proce in midlife tructured around the integration of con ciou and uncon cious psychic content who eem fir t

PHILOSOPHY TODAY

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to ha e introduced the notion of a developmental journey in adulthood which i more than a clean-up operation on childhood. or a program for .. elf-realization." Drawing on a proliferation of metaphor from religion and hermetic philo ophy, Jung' thought implie that development i mo ed and energized b an ever hifting relation between the con ciou and the uncon ciou . and the continual reconstruction of the tructure of the p yche with a re ulting "decentering' of the ego. But the tud of life-cour e development, like that of child-development, ha been most trongly influenced in our century by biology-for example Werner's (1957) "organi mic" theory, and Erikson's (1964) epigenetic model which takes its chief metaphor from embryonic development. Be ide it inherent determini m. it weakne s when it cro e over into p ychology i that in the realm of biology, maturity i the apex of the life-cycle. and further de elopment is development toward death; thi make it hard to imagine adulthood a anything but a journey toward di integration. And it is limited in it ability to addre the i ue of alterity, for the "organism" ha an en ironment, whereas the panicularl human ha an other. In fact the other is the original environment of the infant, and the non-human other i only lowly differentiated from a peronal matrix (Macmurray 1979, Luckmann 1970).

The biological model does offer powerful formulations of the structural dynamic of organic development-Werner' characterization, for example of the function of regression in development (1957, p. 20) offers suggestive parallel and connections with both Freudian and Jungian de criptions of psychic proces . But ultimately any merely biological account break down at the moment at which the human world eparate from the organic. Thi moment i connected not just with the doubling of con ciousne -the mirror elf-ao iated particularly with the human, but with it multiplication acro personal boundaries. In order to look more clo ely into the adult-child relation and it implication for adult development, we need a model which recognize the multiplicity of elfhood acros ubject-object boundaries, the projective relation with the other which that implie , and an

expanded and crucial aspect I relational cone ontologically : misused distol like the health) no one ideal en ment, and psyc "natural" cour Winnicott calli ment. In fact cho-ethical dev ture, something of biological a . is that adu It through dialogL developmental cause parents w their children te the fruits of thal grow even furth own children, a comes normaliz ing, the human' Child and Ad' Who is this I thrust into such c for many adults children are just difference that This projective p alterity in gene" view of the adu I 10) calls the ct absolute other, r others, the child' greater than any c or gender differeJ logical and ephe changing and pa~ adult. Children ; brain size and or and hormonal org derstood that the come, and corr long-term project it-which make Young children al by radical physic: cal dependence c sensorial and motl

a deveJopmeni more than a d, or a program on a prolifera1 and hermetic lies that develed by an ever 1 ciou and the recon truction {ith a re ulting development, ha been mo t llUry by biol)57) 'organi 54) epigenetic letaphor from ~ it inherent it cro e over 1m of biology, : c1e. and furment toward ine adulthood rd di integrait to addres lni m" has an ularly human Ie origin~J ene non-human :d from a per~, Luckmann er powerful namic of orharacterizaof regression uggestive th Freudian hic process. ical account ,hich the hurganic. This ,i th the dour self-aslan, but with undaries. :1 into the lications for del which hood across ~ective relalie and an

expanded and nuanced notion of dialogue as a crucial aspect of that relation. Each of these are relational conditions which. although they are ontologically given, can be ignored, denied, misused, distorted, or otherwi e wounded. Unlike the healthy "organism" of biology, there is no one ideal environment for optimal development, and psychological development i not a "natural" course of events, even given what Winnicott called a "good enough' environment. In fact to orne extent human psycho-ethical development is an aberration of nature, omething seized from the relative inertia of biological adaptation. My ba ic as umption is that adult p ychological development through dialogue with children i crucial to the developmental advance of human culture, because parents who grow through dialogue with their children tend to produce adult who reap the fruits of that growth. and are positioned to grow even funher through dialogue with their own children, and 0 on. When dialogue becomes normalized as an a pect of child-rearing the human world changes. Child and Adult: Developmental Themes Who is this other with whom the adult is thrust into such crucial dialogue? It is difficult for many adults to resist either assuming that children are just like them, or attributing such difference that it amounts to subspeciation. This projective polarization is a problematic of alterity in general. Speaking from the point of view of the adult, Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 110) calls the child a "polymorph"-"not an absolute other, nor the same."1 Unlike adult others, the child's difference from the adult is greater than any combination of cultural, racial or gender differences, for it is organic and biological and ephemeral-that is, it is rapidly changing and passing into sameness with the adult. Children are different from adults in brain size and organization, phy ical tature, and hormonal organization, but it is always understood that that difference i being overcome, and commonly assumed that the long-term project of childhood is to overcome it-which makes it more easily overlooked. Young children are distinguished from adults by radical physical and (usually) psychological dependence on others, by differences in sensorial and motor organization and intensity,

by less (usually) impulse control. by comparably greater developmental pia ticit , and by length of experience in the world. The e translate into differences-whether of degree or kind is moot-in the qualitative experience of lived pace and time and a different. ort of ego- tructure, a well a differing ontological and epi temological assumption ,theorie and convictions. All of these differences make the child particularly vulnerable to marginalization and domination by the culture of adulthood. ot only are adults much more physically powerful, but their typical relation hip to their own experience of childhood i to have mo tly forgotten it. The child come to the adult a the inhabitant of a world once indwelt fully but now di tant, once intimately known from the inside but now forgotten. become exterior-a form of exi tence which i familiar yet trange. Thi can be dangerou for dialogue, for the adult maya ume that he undertands the child because he has been one, yet the actual experience is to a greater or les er degree lost to con cious memory. Seen from the perspective of childhood. adulthood is both a fulfillment of potentialities present in childhood, and a los . The los is a necessary one to attain adulthood, and generally ocially and per onally considered the gains are considered to be worthwhile. Cognitively, the adult profit from the ability to "decenter" and take multiple per pectives, and to operate transformationally on the relations between those perspective. re ulting in an increase of practical and abstract problem- olving kills. Yet the adult acrifices a kind of knowledge of the world which come from a form of con ciousnes embedded in relatively immediate perceptual modes, ba ed more on mimesis and mental oreidetic images than abtract. chematic interpretations. As children become adult , thi world-embeddedne attenuates. Perception itself is increasingly typified: categorization are built up through both inductive experience and socially mediated knowledge (Schutz 1967a).2 Both my own inductive generalizations from experience and ocially derived knowledge become involuntary expectations and interpretive frameworks through which further experience i prejudged and thereby to a great extent predetermined. This chematizalion of experience, and the

PARENT A D CHILD DIALOGUE

35

canalization of impulses and tendencies which accompanies it stand between the subject and the world and lead to the loss of what Schactel (1959) called the child's "world openness," an experiential edge which even if the child isn t aware she has, the adult can observe, and the adult can be aware she has lost. It also lead to tbe forgoing or foreclosure of new experience, and hence increasing repetition and stereotypification. The trade-off of adulthood is that less world-embeddedness leads to less world-openness. If adults knew just what they had lost. it would not be lost. Freud considered what he called "childhood amnesia' to be a result of repression-blocked traumatic memories that obscure the context of the trauma along with them. Schactel thought that childhood amnesia results from a transformation of noetic structures into an abstract categorical memory sy tern which doesn't correspond to the way memory is stored in childhood-hence, for example, the legendary childhood memories triggered by smell. The frequent overwhelming intensity of early childhood experience-of anger. fear delight frustration, fascinated attention and so on-testifies to what Schutz and Luckmann (1973. Schutz I967b) called a "tension of consciousness" which has not yet normalized in the "wide awake" cognitive style of the adult. In Freudian terminology the young child's cognitive style represents a different balance of primary and secondary processes than the adult's. That form of intentionality in which wish, fantasy. dream, and various forms of liminal knowledge mix with everyday schematized knowledge-Winnicott (1970) called this 'transitional space"- uggests a different subject-object. elf-world relation. It is best illustrated in young children's fanta y play, but that i only where it is expre sed in dramatized narrative form. In adults it i the cognitive space of theater (in our age, even more so the space of film, which i a technical analogue of its processes), dream and deep sensuou and emotional experience. Given this situation of both gain and los -and who is to say that as many adults aren't as relieved to be done with childhood as are sorry to have lost it?-the child come to carry special symbolic re onance for many adults. She stands for oneself-a -a-child, and

PHll..OSOPHY TODAY

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the half-remembered experience of the lost continent of childhood. She invokes in the adult an interiority which feels lost to view and yet is of enormous significance-an experience of self submerged, rendered inaccessible because the categorical, typifying memory structures on which all but "deep memory" is arrayed are not present in early childhood. For the adult who experiences elfhood a fragmented and dislocated, childhood represents a return to a lived immediacy which is halfimagined, because it i as much the projection of a po sible future as a recollection of the past. Being with children can promise the unlocking of the ecret of a form of lived experience which has become removed, abstracted, and compartmentalized. The child comes to stand for a concrete, immediate form of knowledge which the adult aspires to regain on another psycho-spiritual level as a direct, intuitive apprehension of the whole. The child is a symbol for the unification of self-which by definition implies unification with the world-which is the adult's developmental project. As such. she also represents the adult' identity projected into the future. a self-permutation which carries possibilities of self-world unity and balance. Adult and child in relation are faced and directed toward different but mutually determinative developmental goals. The trajectories and dynamics of the two directions differ but are related, and are mutually entraining. When they are face to face in the parent-child relation, for one to develop without the other doing so suggests dysfunction. The child's path is clearer than the adult's, for the latter's is a form of recollection--anamnesis-of indirect exploration of an obscure past and its projection onto a future which feels like it might be a return to a different but related place. The adult's direction is toward coming to terms with her own childhood. with the level of experience-i.e. the dimension of subjectivity-which is "child" in her life as an adult and with the complexitie of the ituation of the projection of that child-self onto the real child before her-who, as Levinas reminds us, is and yet is not her. The adult' developmental direction is toward re-integration of self on another level a level which has incorporated the stage----<:hildhood-it has passed beyond into

a new stage. SI this on the eve They are whar once again be< and our culrure should lead us I nOI only the re~ .. bul they are ;

fulfillment in tl

The child's ward "reason" ture"-toward ( of being 'grow adult that she al knows she willi toward differ. other-embeddec self-the emerE self from a glob tivity is ubmer. tions. She is tra' non-plural self. parent she proje onto the adult, super-ego idealhand, the adult, e this unified selff of parenting,-brc Levinas descrilx and not juSt plura boundaries of su triggers in her is. ity away from tl trans-personal su

Dialogue and If this invol blocked-i.e.. if tered by the adult ity and a form of domination becor social reproductic terns is always po of relation becau size, experience, ( doubly acute as a so easily overlool mutual projectiOl when he looks at I other, and the com

nee of the lost invokes in the lost to view and Ice-an experired inaccessible ifying memory eep memory" is r childhood. For lfhood as fraglad represents a which is halfh the projection ;tion of the past. ;e the unlocking ved experience abstracted, and come to stand n of knowledge ;ain on another ct, intuitive aphild is a symbol ch by definition arid-which is :ct. A such she :ntity projected tion which carL!nity and bal-

re faced imd diItuaJly determi['he trajectories lions differ but Itraining. When rent-child relathe other doing child's path is alter's is a form of indirect exd its projection t might be a reice. The adult's terms with her vel of experiof subjectivas an adult, and ituation of the the real child reminds us, is developmental n of self on ancorporated the :d beyond into

a new stage. Schiller (1966 p. 85) articulated this on the eve of the French Revolution: we~: they are what we should once again become. We were nalUre just as they. and our cullUre. by means of reason and freedom. hould lead u back to nalUre. They are. therefore. not only the representation of our lost childhood.. .. but they are also representations of our highest fulfill ment in the ideal

They are what we

The child's direction is from "nature' toward "reason' and "freedom" through "culture"-lOward a clear and well-defined future of being "grown up"-toward imagining the adult that she aJready in a sen e, is. since she know he will be it eventually. She i directed toward differentiation rom world-and other-embeddedne , toward articulation of self-the emergence of a con ciou , unified self from a global matrix in which her subjectivity i ubmerged or imprecated in its relation . She is traveling LOward the ideal of the non-plural self. In her relation hip with her parent, she projects thi anticipated elf-unity onto the adult, who provides a model-a uper-ego ideal-for the child. On the other hand, the adult, even as she comes to represent thi unified self for the child, is, in the situation of parenting brought LO the realization which Levinas describes-that he is a plural self and not just plural within herself but across the boundaries of subjectivity. So what the child triggers in her is a reorganization of subjectivity away from the isolation of self and into trans-personal subjectivity

Dialogue and Creative Reorganization If this involuntary mutual project is blocked-i.e., if child-rearing is not encountered by the adult as a developmental possibility and a form of self-work, the condition for domination become acute. Domination and its . ocial reproduction through child rearing patterns is always possible in this particular form of relation because of radical differences in size, experience and mutual dependence. It is doubly acute as a possibility because it can be so easily overlooked, due LO the situation of mutual projection. The adull sees himself when he looks at his child, but he also sees an other, and the combination of the two can lead

him all to easily to ee someone he "has,' omeone who is not only "me" but is "mine" as well. Levinas takes the analysi of this tendency to another level when he peaks of the relation to the other in which there is not a 'ru ptu re of the egoi t- f' a a fundamental form of ubjective knowledge. This is the tendency of the ego to absorb or 'thematize' the other in its own image, 0 that indeed there i no other. Buber (1970) characterizes this a the "I-It" relation, as oppo ed to the "I-Thou," or ituation of dialogue. Levinas (1987 p.68) uggests that this is how the ego makes ense of the world, and identifies it with "reason:' • knowledge," or "intelligibility"-thus showing how deep a human tendency it is: The light that permits encountering something other than the self. makes it encountered as if this thing came from the ego. The light. the brightness, is intelligibility itself: making everything come from me, it reduces every experience to an element of reminiscence. Reason is alone. And in this sense knowledge never truly encounters anything truly other in the world.

The fact that, in the I-It modality, "reason never truly encounters anything truly other in the world" would seem to imply that the rupture of the egoist-I is not an inevitable aspect of psycho-ethical development but a task and a discipline, and hence a developmental phenomenon which is supported by cultural-historical traditions and practices. The rupture of the egoist-I can be identified with lung's metaphor of the decentering of the ego with the appearance of the unifying "Self' in the individuation process. For lung, the ego as "reason 'or "intelligibility itself' represents a provisional unity of the subject-in-process. There comes a certain moment in adult development when it becomes possible for the ego to be "ousted from its central and dominating position," and to give up its "illusion of rna tery"-to recognize its inability to act as the control center of subjectivity-which allows for what he refers to as a vitalizing of the personality through an "afflux of unconscious contents." It is through thi process of decentering and regression that a • new totality" emerges, which lung (1969) calls the "Self." The ego does not disappear for "the Self has a functional meaning only when it can

PARENT AND CHll..D DIALOGUE 37

act compensatorily to ego-consciousness" (p. 231).3 Rather the ego recognizes that it is not the self-recognizes its relative position in a plural and evolving subjectivity, and enter into dialogue with the other element of the constellated structure, which now include the other. lung con iders this movement of reorganization to begin in midlife and doe nm connect it with parenting. I would suggest that it can begin at any time in the life cycle, and that parenting is a major opportunity for the initiation of this process and perhaps it mo t frequent trigger for many adults. The ego-centered self is non-dialogical-it does not encounter anything truly other in the world. In the mode of alreriry dialogue is a form of knowledge; one know the other through dialogue. Dialogue assumes the decentered ego, and also produces il. When we enter into dialogue we do what psychoanalysi calls "withdrawing the projection," for it is through projection of chematized categories-of typification -that we make of the other the same. When we enter dialogue, we enter into what Levina (1987, p. 116) call "the logical character of uniciry, beyond the distinction between the univer al and the individuaL" We recognize "the unique one... the absolutely oTher."When the "egoist-I' j • ruptured: we grasp the other, as Buber (1966, p. 97) says "non-relatively, ... without in erting the experienced thing into relations to other things. ' If we recognize the other only through the schematized and typified knowledge of the unrupLUred ego, we know the world only through projection of the categories of edimented experience. So dialogue is, a Levinas (1987, p. lIS) ays, a "rupwre of the natural order of being:' and yet it i the heart of the ethical relation. In dialogue, we recognize the other a non-thematizable; it i a "relationhip to the other a other, and nm a reduction of the other to the arne." Projective knowledge ab orbs the identity of the other, and bend and adjust the other to its schemata; the other is a creen onto which I project my internal imagery. To 'withdraw" this imagery is experienced as a rupture because in the natural order of being human relationships are characterized by an inter-play of projections. My lome" is a way of meeting your projection of who I am and visa versa. If self-

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hood i plural across personal boundaries, then it is to a large extent projective. There is no uch thing a eeing the other (or oneself) in her es ence, apart from projection. To a great extent our own felt subjectivity consists of attempts to sati fy and to internalize the other's projection. We hape the screen to receive the image, and we hape the image to fit the creen. What then does it mean to withdraw the projection, and to apprehend the other as unthematizable, a the unique one? For Levina thi i ugge ted in hi reflections on li me. I and the olher do not share temporal pre ence except in thematized lime-typified time, time organized schematically which asume and project a past and a future. The lime of radical alterity i a time in which the other i "alway on the verge of presence but never comes to pre ence" (1987, p. 18). It is not so much that the other is before or outside of time a that "the time of the other and my time do not occur at the arne lime; the time of the other disrupTS my temporality. So time is neither the other's nor mine" (p. 12). The uniquene of the ingle one never emerges from the matrix of projection but is always on the verge, hiding on it margins or within a break in its patterned continuitie -a transgressive urd. The egoi t-I, then is never really ruptured, becau e it i omological-but it is continually threatened with rupture by another order of being. an order which we might call . pre ence." Whether or not this "presence' is imply the limit condition in the play of Derrida's "differance" is a moot poinl. In any case the other is the one who both evokes it and remains just beyond it. Technically speaking, it would appear that to withdraw the projection i above all to become conscious of it-as in meditation one i consciou of the content of the mind, but does not identify with them. The major relational outcome is an ethical one-what Levinas (1987, p. 25) cal1s "renouncing conslrainl...renouncing ... force and whatever is ail-powerful.' Relations based on projection are relation of force, and commonly relation of domination however subtle and complex. In opening oneself to the other who 'eludes thematization " who "overflow absolutelyevery idea I can have of him," one experiences "the wonder proper to ethical significance"-a

felt responsibil enced as an ex This is parti adult-child reI: easily to force, power differer cause a crucial mental journe} perience of a I between pers· sue-whether I constellated ell

Regression a One overare projective rela! through dialogl regression. If th degree my regn is in a differen herself, and the relation. That d resents-is-rr pp.138-39)pri psychological e an organism. I struclures and ress funher. bi plished throug earlier. less SIal der to progres! psychological operations: om lution) of exist behavior palter vation of pri n which undiffer nomena emerg l

My child is a tion in the servi involved in a Ii movement from ative globality , state of increasil and hierarchic i other hand, lrigg alterity, am dt (partly) accomp of the emergent of stability as a g

)undaries, then 'e. There is no (or oneself) in ion. To a great consists of atlize the other's 1 to receive the o fit the creen. :hdraw the prothe other as lue one? For reflections on .hare temporal time-typified :ally which asa future. The e in which the If pre ence but ,p. 18).lt is not e or outside of ~r and my time the time of the So time i nei~). The uniqueerge from the llway on the within a break I tran gressive ver really rup-but it is conby another orwe might call • "presence" is , the play of It point. In any h evokes it and lid appear that Dove all to bedilation one is mind, but does ajor relational what Levinas :onstraint...rer is aJl-power:tion are rela, relations of ::I complex. In who "eludes absolutelyevIe experiences nificance"-a

felt responsibility to the other which is experienced as an existential categorical imperative. This is particularly significant for the adult-child relation which lends itself all too easily to force, not only becau e of the obvious power differential between the two, but because a crucial aspect of the child' developmenlal journey is the internalization from experience of a perspective on power relations between persons. Force is always an i sue-whether between person or between the constellated elements of the plural elf. Regression and Creative Reorganization

One overarching theme of the adult-child projective relationship and it tran formation through dialogue is connected with the idea of regres ion. If the child is my elf, he i to orne degree my regressed self. She is me and yet he is in a differeOl relation between the part of herself, and therefore in a differeOl elf-world relation. That different elf-world relation represems-is-my regressed self. Werner (1957, pp. 138-39) prioritizes the role of regre ion in psychological de elopment: an organism. having anained highly Slabilized structures and operations mayor may not progress further. but if it does. this will be accomplished through partial return to a genetically earlier. less stable level. One has to regress in order to progress.... in creative reorganization. psychological regression involves two kinds of operations: one is the de-differentiation (dissolution) of existing. schematized or automatized behavior patterns: the other consists in the activation of primitive levels of behavior from which undifferentiated (little-formulated) phenomena emerge.

My child is actively involved in differentiation in the service of the emergent self. She is involved in a life-cycle moment of dramatic movement from as Werner says, "a state of relative globality and lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation articulation, and hierarchic integration" (p. 126). I, on the other hand, triggered by thi new experience of alterity am de-differentiating an already (partly) accomplished structure in the service of the emergent sel f. She use my relative tate of stability as a guide and a projective goal, and

I use her relative lack of stability as a metaphorical model for the deconstruction of a tructure of subjectivity become' schematized or automatized," and as an incenlive to the creative reorganization of that structure. Anna Freud referred to this as "regression in the service of progression" (Blum, 1994. p. 67). There is a connection between my elf-reorganization when faced with my child, and my capacity to assist in the emergent self-organization of my child. The psychohistorian Lloyd deMause (1974, p. 3), in his theory of the hi torical evolution of child-rearing modes, identified thi connection a the most important factor of advance. "The origin of thi evolution, . he claims, "lie in the ability of ucce ive generations of parents to regress to the p ychic age of their children and work through the anxieties of that age in a better manner the econd time they encounter them than they did during their own childhood." The resu It is what he calls the "empathic reaction," or: the adult's ability to regress to the level of a child's need and correctly identify it without an admixture of the adult's own projections. The adult must then be able to maintain enough distance from the need to be able to satisfy it. It is an ability identical (0 the u e of the psychoanalyst' unconscious called "free-floating allention." or ... "listening with the third ear." (p. 7)

Taken together, lung's. Werner's, Anna Freud' and deMau e' formulations imply that the child' relatively low impulse-control triggers regression in the parent, which helps him understand and tolerate the child's feelings and behavior; which in turn helps him-through revisiting these feelings in an other who is himself-to come into a new relation with his (the adult's) own impulse-life which is often tied up in what lung calls the "shadow," or that regressive aspect of myself which my ego will not permit me to recognize as my own. According to lung, the encounter with the shadow is the first step of the individuation process-by which he means the decentering of the ego and the emergence of the Self. It is the adult's child-within which the child before him both evokes and constrains him to reconstruct, which in tum moves him to withhold his projections from the child-before-him

PARENT AND CHll..D DIALOGUE 39

and experience hi alway -coming-to- pre - mum of hi torically developed projection to ence as the unique one. The net effect for the dodge or di entangle. The child live in a world adult i a reorganization of the ubjective econ- of what Buber (1970, pp. 76. 78) call "pure omy toward the Self-toward an emergent in- natural a ociation: where' the longing for retegration of compartmentalized and polarized lation i primary." Thi exi tential ituation i a pect of the plural elf, and the energizing of the ground of and precondition for dialogue, thi new balance by in tinctual energie hich but the emergence of dialogue proper follow can now be allowed into the reorganized truc- differentiation from thi matrix-world. when ture.In 0 doing the adult find him elf able to the child come to percei e her elf a an offer the psychological pace to the child-be- other-when he begin [Q a "I." Thi i the fore-him that will reduce the po ibilitie of moment of inner divi ion, when the elf i put the reproduction in the child of a elfhood with at a distance from it elf and become plural.~ split-off element. The child generate a p y- Oi lance is a necessary condition for dialogue, chological pace for the adult in which the lat- So Buber (1965, p. 60) peak of a twofold ter re-experience the developmental plastic- movement of development of ubjectivity. the ity, the pre-unity which characterize the life of first being "the primal euing at a di tance," childhood, in which the dynamic balance be- and the second "entering into relation," Distween what Werner call "fixity and mobility" tance. he says, "provides the human situation: is tuned for creative self-reorganization. A the relation provides man's becoming in that situaadult learns to guide hi child toward a healthy tion." When distance emerges, the I-It beimpulse life and an integrated shadow through come po sible; the I now begin to meet and withholding the projection, he re-teache him- assimilate the other according to categorized self. 4 chemata developed from past experience and Finally, deMause's analy i uggest that projected onto new. The I-It is not alienated exthis process is accompli hed through dia- perience except a it hardens against the po silogue-through the meditative "free-Ooating bility and the emergence of the I-You. It i attention" which doe not identify with one' through dialogue that the original condition is projections, in thi ca e the punitive, repre ive endle sly-but never completely-recovered superego projections introjected from the dialectically. adult's own parents. At thi dialogical moment Dialogue i not a sured. while typification of dodging and di entangling the projections, i . Thi i the ulnerabilityofthehumancondithe adult renounces force in the form of being tion to objectification. alienation, and rationalable to control the child' "will." This i po i- ization, Typification i natural, while dialogue, ble because the parent recognize the unique which i a heuri tic for the opening of the elf one, the other who, as Levina 1987) put it. to the I-You relation. must be de eloped comes before the ego and it other-ab orbing through culture, childrearing and education. form of knowledge, a a radical. in oluntary Projective chemata proliferate effortle Iy, ethical command [Q attention. re ponsibility, while the withholding or u pen ion of the proand deep care: jection-although it i an involuntary re pon e to what Levina (1987. p. 113) refer to a "the Responsibility for the Other-the face ignifyimperative that command the ego b way of jng to me "thou shalt not kill:' and con equently the Other' face," a '·commandment•. a "catealso "you are responsible for the life of (hi abimperative"-<:an be ignored. gorical olutel other other"-is re pon ibilit for the The importance of adult-child dialogue lie unique one. The "unique one" mean the loved in the fact that dialogue i a cultural and a hi one, love being the condition of the very po j. tOricaJ product. which mean that it i reprobility of uniqueness. (p. 108) duced-<:>r not-through child-rearing and education, Children are both more dialogical Distance, Dialogue, and Dialectic 0; more 0 becau e they than adult and Ie Although consciousness i by nature pro- are till immer ed in the primary relation with jective-<:>r in the language of phenomenology. the other, which i a pre-dialogical condition. , intentional"-the child begin with a mini- Their approach to the other i only lowly dif-

PHILOSOPHY TODAY

40

ferentiating fro relation" (Bub( tively concret modes of perc their parad world-embed nes -inherent les dialogical makes it po ! jor-the-other wi mandment" (U yet fully artici teacher and Ie tion with her ch itself' (p. 91 )ground of relati< for the child the is natural or pr scious dimensio Withholding ative movement mandment-it i! is always comin projections. The from even furthe in our arm and; coming a new g, replaceable indi' locutor into the: other in the full ~ thematizing gaze yond the ego's t through ab orbil my recognition 0 that she is a pers person-which ! optimal develo{:

Blum. H. P. (1994) ,,gres ion:' in The P: pp.6(}...76. Buber, M. (1965)

Knowledge of Mar. ( ew York: Harper Buber. M. (1966) Thl ( ew York: Schock Buber, M. (1970) I ar York: Scribner's).

I projections to lives in a world 78) call 'pure : longing for reItial situation i n for dialogue, proper follow lx-world, when her elf a an "I." Thi i the n the elf is put ;:comes plural.~ )n for dialogue. : of a twofold ;ubjectivity, the at a di lance,' relation." Disuman ituation: ng in that itua:s. the I-It beins to meet and to categorized experience and lot alienated ex~ain t the po si:he I-You. It is nal condition is el y-recovered lile typification e human condi)0, and rationalwhile dialogue, :ning of the elf be developed and education. .te effortlessly, Ision of the prolOtary response refers to as "the ego by way of ment," a "catenored. Id dialogue lies tural and a hi hat it is reprorearing and edlore dialogical because they y relation with ical condition. nly slowly dif-

ferentiating from this matrix of "the a priori of relation" (Suber, 1970, p. 78), and their relatively concrete-intuitive, figural, mimetic modes of perception and cognition are-in their paradoxical combination of world-embedded ness and world-openness-inherently other-grounded. They are less dialogical becau e the di tance which make it possible for alterity-for "the jar-the-other which dawns in the ego a a commandment" (Levinas, 1987, p. 106)6-i not yet fully arriculated. So the adult i both teacher and learner: learner because her relation with her child-her "ego become other to itself' (p. 91 )-returns her to the participatory ground of relation: teacher becau e he model for the child the relation acros di tance, which is natural or proto-dialogue rai ed to a conciou dimension. Withholding the projection i not ju t a negative movement, or the constraint of a commandment-it i a welcoming of the other who is alway coming to me from ju t beyond my projection. The child appear to come to us from even further. When we first take our child in our arm and look into her face, we are welcoming a new gaze a new voice, a new and irreplaceable individuality, a full-fledged interlocutor into the world. My child is already an other in the full sense of the term-beyond the thematizing gaze of the 'egoist-I," and thus beyond the ego's capacity to make her present through absorbing her into its own time. It is my recognition of her otherness, which implies that he is a person-that she was never not a person-which supports and releases her for optimal development through our relation,

which is also the vehicle for my self-transformation. My tran formation i toward a form of ubjectivity which is plural acros the boundaries of the elf. ow the other is no more other to me than I am to myself: the field of my ubjectivity is now in a process of reeon truction acro the boundaries of my per on. and include the other. It eems a paradox that the unification of self which this initiates pre ents it elf-to analy i anyway-a a pluralization. It wa the totalizing gaze of the ego that, in lung' terms when "ou ted from it central and dominating po ition' in the self-structure. relinquished its role as the "control center" of ubjectivity, Through thi decentering of one part of the structure. the whole a a structure of dialogical relation emerges. The whole includes elements of otherne s both within and across boundaries. My ego, which no longer presumes to unite the other element through domination, now experience emergent unity through dialogue-dialogue with elements of the personal and collective unconscious and dialogue with the other with whom I am in relation-and potentially every other. Individuation is a process which i moved along through pluralization and dialogue. In recognizing the other as non-thematizable, as the unique one who comes from beyond the typifying gaze of the ego, of reason, of "intelligibility, ' I recognize her like my child, as myself. In recognizing the other as myself, I recognize that I myself am an emergent whole whose parts I cannOI control, but only encounter. "Desire for the new in us is the desire for the other."

WORKS CITED Blum, H. P. (1994) "The Conceptual Development of Re-

DeMause. L. (1974) "The Evolulion of Childhood," in

gression," in The PsychoanalyTic STudy oflhe Child. 49,

DeMause. L.. ed. The HislOry ofChildhood. ( ew York:

pp.60-76.

P ychohistory Pre 5). pp. 3-75.

Buber. M. (1965) "Dislance and Relation," in The

Knowledge

0/ Man:

A Philosophy of Ihe Interhuman

Erik on. E. H. (1964) "Human Strenglh and Ihe Cycle of Generalions," in Insight and Responsibility: LeCTures on

( ew York: Harper and Row).

The Ethical Implicarions of Psychoanalytic InsighT Buber, M. (1966) The Wayo/Response,

.

. Glazer. ed.

( ew York:

OrlOn).

( ew York: Schocken Book ). Buber. M. (1970) I and Thou .. Iran. W. Kaufmann ( e\ York: Scribner's).

Foucaull. M. The Care nf The Self ( ew York: Random Hou e. 1986).

PARE TAD CHILD DIALOGUE 41

Freud. S. (1957) Five Lectures on PsychoafUJlysis. in J. Strachey. ed.. The Standard Edition of the Comp/ere

Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. vol. 11 (London: Hogarth Press).

Schiller. F. von (1966) Nai"ve and Sentimental Poetry and

On the Sublime ( ew York: Frederick Unger). Schutz. A. (1967a) The Phenomenology of the Social

World (Evanston:

ortbwestem University Press).

Jung. C. G. (1969) Structure and Dynamics ofthe Psyche,

Schutz, A. (1967b) "On Multiple Realities," in Collected

ed. and trans. by G. Adler and R. F. Hall (Princeton:

Papers. Vol. 1: The Problem of Social Reality (The

Bollingen).

Hague: Maninus

Levinas. E. (1969) Totality and Infinity. trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press). (Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1987). Luckmann, T. (1970) "On the Boundaries of the Social World:' in M.

atan on. ed. Phenomenology and Social

Reality: Essays in Memory ofAlfred Schutz (The Hague:

Schutz. A. and Luckmann. T. (1973) The Structures ofthe

Stem. D.

ortbwestem University Press).

. (1985) The Interpersonal World ofthe Infant

( ew York: Basic Books). Vaillant. G. (1977) Adaptation to Life (Boston: Little Brown). Werner, H. (1957) "The Concept of Development from a

Maninus Nijhoff). pp. 13-100. Macmurry, J. (1961) Persons in Relation (Atlantic Heights.

ijhoff). pp. 230-42.

life- World(Evanston:

Levinas. E. (1987) 1ime and the Other. trans. R. A. Cohen

Comparative and Organismic Point of View." in D. B. Harris. ed., The Concept of Development: An Issue in

J: Humanities Press).

Merleau-Ponty. M. (1964) "Methode en psychologie de I'enfanl." Bulletin de Psychologie n. 236 tome XVIII

the Study of Human Behavior. pp. 137-47 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Winnicott. D. W. (1970). Playing and Reality (London:

3-6. ovembre. Schactel. E. (1959) Metamorphosis ( ew York: Basic

Tavistock).

Books).

END OTES 1. "II faut concevoir renfam ni comme un 'autre' absolu,

mechanisms, i.e. those "unconscious strategies for deal-

ni comme 'Ie meme' que no us, mais com me

ing with anxiety." The adult could also be seen as re-

polymorphe:'

working each of Erikson's "psychosocial crises" as the

2. I.e., knowledge acquired from "my friends, my parents. my teachers and the teachers of my teachers" (p. 13). 3. And he adds. "If the ego is dissolved in identification with the Self. it gives rise to a son of nebulous superman with a puffed up ego and a deflated self." 4. According to George Vaillant (1977. pp. 383-86) the growth of the adult i IOward more mature defense

child works through them for the first time. See Erikson 1964. 5. This plurality i structurally implicit from the beginning. See tern, 1985. 6. And he adds. "a commandment understood by the ego in its very obedience ... as jfthe ego obeyed beforehaving understood. and as if the intrigue of alterity were knOlled prior

10

Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043

PHILOSOPHY TODAY 42

HEGELAI

knowledge."

In Same' late tical Reason, he in comprehendin dom in a concret, where reciprocit: dom and self-unl is a dialectically the isolated indivi grated individual forms of social l solidarity.' In wh the accounts Heg the lived experien when involved iJ meaning of the b< text, especially th understood as the argues that his vie ity is more concr and that only ti organicism, but I spond to these cri! has much to offer tique addresse ar reciprocity and sc consider directly, ments of the Criti wards a construct thought instead 01 cifically Sartre'~ Hegel's account t< of group involvem the group how thl the bonds of solie tion, and how one vidual and a grouf In light of wha think it is worth tr sic philo ophical Sartre (of the Cric. generally, both thl push the terms of e. ing from the parti;

PHll.-OSOPHY