Gesture, game and word; the infantile speech

Abstract

The paper refers to the need to embrace the diverse elements of infantile discourse in the analytical session, where gesture and action (the movement of play) are ways of saying which together with words form language. We highlight some contributions by other disciplines which enable the development of this side of infantile discourse and which, on the other hand, evince a certain turn of linguistics towards semiotics. Thus, J. Austin’s contribution enriches time psychoanalytic viewpoint of subjective
realisation in the doing-saying, saying-doing, also including time other in its effects. Likewise, the semiotic contributions in relation to simultaneity (of Ideas or meanings) in gestures -as against successive information in time verbal mode- better sustain my
psychoanalytic contention that the child convokes time presence of the other’s desire in his saying and gestures with a quality that differs from that of words. Conceptualisations on text, textuality (M. Bajtin, J. Kristeva) also contribute from other
contexts time idea of production (of meanings, symbolic) I bring nearer to time psycoanalytic proposal of significative production.
Some of these elements are made explicit through clinical vignettes; at time same time we stress different nuances regarding time technical aspects of time analytical encounter with children (changes and risks). Infantile discourse with and from time play objects should not require an immediate translation, but rather analytic listening eventually embracing time availability of
movement-gesture on time side of time analyst. Discourse as an event implying structure processing (psychic work) which at time same time permits us to reformulate acts, actions, leading to their inclusion in time psychoanalytic corpus, and not only as a form of rescuing a distortion.