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The Latin term <i>infans</i>, derived from the Greek <i>phèmi</i> ("I speak"), means "one who does not (or rather, not yet) speak," and refers to the baby before the acquisition of speech that marks the entry into childhood.</p>
<p>A number of authors (notably Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott) used the term to describe those whose mode of communication is situated at a preverbal level. In the work of Jacques Lacan the term <i>infans</i> took on a further dimension in his discussion of language and its relation to the unconscious. Piera Aulagnier elaborated a theory of the mother-infant relation in terms of discourse (with the mother as "word-bearer"). The discussion here will be limited to the specific reference to language implied in the notion of <i>infans</i>.</p>
<p>In French translations of authors like Klein or Winnicott, terms such as <i>bébé</i> (baby), <i>nourrisson</i> (nursling), <i>petit enfant</i> (small/young child), or <i>infans</i> are used. A good many of Klein's texts were originally written in German, and she used the word <i>infans</i>, which was translated in different ways in English and then in French, according to Luis E. Prado de Oliveira.
is linked to the need to create and hold a subject-place (the spoken shadow) where there are as yet only potentialities. Accordingly, the future subject, the I, will come into being in a space preformed by expectations that are not its own. This is the necessary violence of maternal interpretation. But just as there is no such thing as a developmental <i>tabula rasa</i>, there can be no human subject without this pre-form. It is the discrepancy between the infant and shadow that makes it possible to situate a violence that will only really be violent (secondary violence) if the mother imposes it no longer upon the infant, but upon the I of the child.</p>
<p><i>See also:</i> <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/apprenti-historien-et-le-maitresorcier-l"><i>Apprenti-historien et le maítre-sorcier (L'-)</i> [The apprentice historian and the master sorcerer]</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/controversial-discussions-anna-freud-melanie-klein">Controversial Discussions</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/demand">Demand</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/graph-desire">Graph of Desire</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/helplessness">Helplessness</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/">I</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/ideational-representation">Ideational representation</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/identificatory-project">Identificatory project</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/infant-development">Infant development</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/megalomania">Megalomania</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/narcissism">Narcissism</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/object">Object</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/other">Other, the</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/narcissism-primary">Primary narcissism; Sense/nonsense</a>; <a href="http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis-encyclopedia/violence-interpretation-from-pictogram-statement"><i>Violence of Interpretation, The: From Pictogram to Statement</i></a>.</p>
