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<blockquote>It is probable that the [[fear ]] of poisoning is connected with weaning. Poison is the nourishment that makes one ill. Perhaps, moreover, the [[child ]] traces his early illnesses back to this [[frustration]].<ref>{{NILP}} Ch. 5 </ref></blockquote>

Weaning is the [[name ]] for the [[suppression ]] or reduction of [[breast ]] milk and/or [[baby ]] [[formula ]] to replace it with more solid food. Weaning is at the crossroads of [[biology]], [[culture]], and the [[psychic ]] organization of the [[mother]]/child [[dyad]].

Weaning involves the interactive [[process ]] of interruption of the corporeal [[relationship ]] between mother and child. It begins spontaneously during the second six months of [[life ]] as an effect of the [[infant]]'s [[maturation]]; the infant manifests a decreased interest in feeding, especially if it has been breast fed, and begins an [[active ]] [[search ]] for [[autonomy ]] that the mother can perceive and facilitate according to her [[affective ]] syntony with the infant, as [[Benjamin ]] Spock described in "The Striving for Autonomy and [[Regressive ]] [[Object ]] Relationship" (1963), according to her affective syntony with the infant.

In his Introductory Lectures on [[Psycho]]-[[Analysis ]] (1916-1917a [1915-1917]), Sigmund [[Freud ]] described weaning as [[traumatic]], perhaps owing to syntony, but also as the [[moment ]] when [[nostalgia ]] for the mother appears, which is [[present ]] in all infants, and above all in those who have not been breast fed. Melanie [[Klein ]] studied the relations between weaning and the depressive [[position ]] that accompanies it and that continues on thereafter. In "Les [[complexes ]] familiaux dans la [[formation ]] de l'[[individu]]" ([[Family ]] complexes in the formation of the [[individual]]; 1938), Jacques [[Lacan ]] organized the various points of view in the following way: Traumatic or not, he explained, weaning leaves in the [[psyche ]] a permanent trace of the [[biological ]] relationship it interrupts. This moment also presents the twofold aspect of a crisis in the psyche, the first that unquestionably has a [[dialectical ]] [[structure]]. For the first [[time]], a vital tension is expressed in [[terms ]] of a [[mental ]] [[intention]].

Weaning forms the basis for the positive aspect of the weaning [[complex]], that is, the [[image ]] of nourishment that tends to establish the most archaic and [[stable ]] [[feelings ]] uniting the individual with his or her family: It thus constitutes the basis of familial and [[social ]] life.

In L'Image inconsciente du [[corps ]] (The [[unconscious ]] image of the [[body]]; 1984), Françoise Dolto discussed weaning as an [[oral ]] [[castration ]] of the child, that is, an imposed [[deprivation ]] of what for him or her is cannibalism in relation to the mother. Dolto also elaborated E. Forman's [[concept ]] of [[motherhood ]] as a [[developmental ]] [[stage ]] and associated the possibility of successful weaning with the mother's ability to accept the interruption of body-to-body contact, and above all, to [[communicate ]] with the infant in various ways, among [[them ]] providing food, but also by means of [[words ]] and gestures, which [[represent ]] the [[desire ]] and possibility to [[speak ]] for the child: "The baby is talking [[about ]] feeding, but not about the breast."

The time of weaning, ever earlier in our culture, represents the relational [[conflict ]] characteristic of the late oral or oral-[[sadistic ]] stage. Bernard Golse emphasized its ambivalent aspect, due to the fact that incorporating the mother becomes destructive with teething. The infant who suckles the breast attacks it and wins nourishment by inflicting hurt. The cannibalistic impulses of the two partners are reciprocally activated, and both must learn to [[sense ]] and [[control ]] [[aggression]]. This is indeed what happens in cases of "[[good]]" weaning, due both to a simultaneous establishing of distance by the mother and by the infant and to the [[working ]] out of the child's [[aggressive ]] and [[libidinal ]] requirements in the [[presence ]] of the mother as an object.

Failures in weaning include late weaning (often because of the mother's desire to prolong the [[erotogenic ]] [[pleasure ]] of nursing), which can be experienced by the infant as [[punishment ]] and which makes the process of [[separation]]/individuation difficult. Inversely, premature weaning—that is, before the infant has been able to invest [[other ]] objects—has varying effects according to the circumstances. Among the most serious failures, there is fusion of the life [[instinct ]] and the [[death ]] instinct, as in cases of mental [[anorexia ]] or addictions to orally ingested substances. In extreme cases of weaning following abandonment, Dolto explained in LesÉtapes majeures de l'[[enfance ]] (The major [[stages ]] of [[childhood]]; 1994), a behavioral [[regression]], due to residual [[fantasies ]] from before the [[trauma]], compromises the previously acquired sound-producing capability of the larynx and the oral cavity. Psychogenic mutism can ensue, with or without [[loss ]] of hearing.

[[James ]] S. Grotstein studied the end of [[analytic ]] [[treatment ]] as a weaning that makes possible a liberation of [[narcissism ]] with the aim of accepting the [[world ]] as it is. [[Paul]]-Claude Racamier more specifically described weaning from the sleeping treatment, during which [[patients ]] are lavished with maternal care that helps them to emerge from the regression and to establish very deep bonds with the physician providing treatment.

* [[Lacan, Jacques]]. (1984). [[Les complexes familiaux dans la formation de l'individu ]] (pp. 23-30; written for Encyclopédie française, Vol. 8). [[Paris]]: Larousse. (Original [[work ]] published 1938)