Description du livre
We follow the journey of Melanie, Lorenzo, Fiona, Eric—babies observed day by day, from birth and for several months or years, in the construction of their relationship with the world, with their parents and with their surroundings.
What do they show us? The astonishing capacities of the baby to connect to the brain of another human, to nestle in it like a small psychic marsupial, after having scanned in its environment the best available affective “Wi-Fi terminal.” Not necessarily its father or mother if they do not meet its criteria of absolute requirement as regards quality and safety of the emotional connection that is available.
Melanie, from the fourth day of life, chose to renounce her parents, who were unable to pay attention to her, and asked for help from the professionals of the maternity hospital and then of the nursery where she was placed, after a dramatic episode of psychological coma. During the first year of her life, in order to escape the insecurity generated by her parents, Melanie fell asleep as soon as they want to carry her, but woke up as if by magic as soon as she was in other, safer, even unknown arms.
Lorenzo, barely two weeks old, cried during a consultation and quickly calmed down in the arms of a nursery nurse, while his mother admitted that she could never calm him down at home. For the next two weeks, his crying quickly subsided because, in order not to be mistreated by his father, who was exasperated by his cries, Lorenzo had learned to cry quietly. Placed in an institution at the age of one month, he was a very gentle baby, shying away from relationships, silent; but he changed completely when he found himself facing his father who had "shaken him." His whole body stiffened and he stared at his father with a hypnotic and worrying look. It would be several weeks before he re-established quality “Wi-Fi connections” with his mothering.
Eric was not lucky enough to be separated early enough from his parents who abandoned him in his bed, deprived of emotional and sensory life, deprived of “Wi-Fi.” Removed from his family at the age of three, he was a little boy who lost interest in humans but was fascinated by beeps, the fridge lamp, toy batteries, electric buttons. He became an electronic baby, looped, disconnected from the web of humans.
These stories tell us how babies, from birth, have this skill to test by themselves the quality of the connections of the human network that surrounds them and to choose their first emotional attachments according to the quality of the signals received in return—without worrying about their filiation or their biological reality. A shock! They reveal to us through this unheard-of skill what is human in a person and how the little person becomes human. A new and modern vision of the human baby.
These babies show us the intense efforts they make, from the moment they are born, to relate and to be kind, to make themselves light in the arms that carry them, to exist in the brains they cram into to ensure their safety and to “download” the knowledge of the world they need to survive. Babies very actively adapt to their new life as earthlings through the “Wi-Fi connections” they make in the first few minutes of their lives.
The author concludes his book with a call to consider the reality of the psychic suffering of abused babies. Twenty-five years ago, the medical world finally discovered that babies could feel physical pain, which has since been recognized and treated. Before that, they were operated on without any anesthesia. From today's perspective, this is barbaric. It is urgent to make the same intellectual revolution for the psychological pain and emotional distress of the infant, which is detectable and curable if we know how to spot the signs from birth. The psychological future of thousands of babies every year depends on it. Let's save human babies!
A child psychiatrist in France for 25 years, the author has received three awards for his work on children from the Aide Sociale à l'Enfance, the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale and the Observatoire National de l'Enfance en Danger. He was also the winner of a short story contest on psychiatry. He has worked for more than 20 years in a nursery in Maine et Loire, in the west of France.