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What if it Didn’t All Begin and End with Containment? Toward a Leaky Sense of Self

Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), emanning{at}alcor.concordia.ca

In Esther Bick’s psychoanalytic theory, the infant’s relation to the world is mediated by the skin’s capacity to serve as a container for experience. As the infant develops, containment increasingly expresses cohesion of self, as fostered by the continued interaction with the caretaker. Through an emphasis on particular forms of interaction — forms that specifically involve skin-to-skin touch — an infant is given the receptacle necessary for eventual interactive self-sufficiency. But what if the skin were not a container? What if the skin were not a limit at which self begins and ends? What if the skin were a porous, topological surfacing of myriad potential strata that field the relation between different milieus, each of them a multiplicity of insides and outsides? This article explores these questions through Daniel Stern’s account of infancy.

Key Words: Bick • container • skin • Stern

Body & Society, Vol. 15, No. 3, 33-45 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X09337785


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