The rejection of knowing

ABSTRACT

Cases of child sexual trauma are rarely understood in ways that lead to a clear separation of an internal and external reality. The child’s as well as the professionals’ meaning making process requires time, patience and listening rather than isolated structured observations, a process that opposes an empirical paradigm dictating what reality is, where to look for it and how. Just as the myth of King Oedipus deals with the significance of the outer reality and how it affects the inner world, various developments of psychoanalytic theory and practice have through time unfolded different descriptions of how we should understand the relation between our analysands’ outer world, and the world they present to us in the analytic room. Through case-material from two child analyses with children addicted to sexual excitement and with the theories of Laplanche and Lacan and the myth of Oedipus, the paper argues that the children’s expressions represent the enigmatic approach of the other as always being inside and also outside – always for real and in fantasy. Because children cannot find the answer in themselves, they act in realized ways that put the analyst to work in a position of not knowing.

KEYWORDS:

• Infantile sexuality
• sexual trauma
• Oedipus
• Laplanche
• Lacan

Acknowledgments

The writing of the article has been supported by Bertil Wennborgs Stiftelse.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bertil Wennborg Stiftelsen [2018].

Notes on contributors

Katrine Zeuthen

Katrine Zeuthen is Associate Professor in Clinical Child Pychology at The University of Copenhagen and Psychoanalyst in private practice. Member of The Danish Psychoanalytic Society and IPA.