to share some experiences not only with others but also with the self. Paradoxically, language creates a split between the lived and the represented experience, thus contributing to estrangement, while simultaneously enabling the infant to share his/her state of “‘being‐with’ others in intimacy, isolation, loneliness, fear, awe, and love” (Stern, 1985, p. 182). With the advent of symbolic function, the domain of the private is established between the false self and the true self; it contains all experiences that are not shared, but are not disavowed, which means that they are accessible by language and changeable through experience.
In conclusion, it is remarkable that, although Stern formulated a theory for the interpersonal world of the infant and was a proponent of intersubjectivity, he also acknowledged the infant’s need for aloneness and linked it with adult experiences of beneficial aloneness. Schema‐of‐being‐with‐the‐self – a notion combining cognitive and psychoanalytic traditions – implies that from early on the individual is capable of a rather stable representation of a non‐shareable self, complemented by the representation of a self‐in‐a‐relationship. Of major importance for the understanding of the creative use of aloneness is Stern’s view about the paradox of language. The emergence of language, early in life, marks the end of the possibility for a complete understanding, through all senses, of oneself by a significant other, because of the chasm it produces between the real and the symbolized experience. However, only with language can the individual fill and enjoy this empty space as well as share, as far as this is possible, his/her aloneness experiences with the other.
Idiom
Following Winnicott, Christopher Bollas (1989) posited that each human being has a true self, which may be called idiom, “an inherited set of dispositions” (p. 10), a “unique nucleus” (p. 212), which is present before object relating. The idiom meets culture and, through their dialectic, the psychic life of the individual develops. It is a form of knowledge that Bollas (1989) named the unthought known, in the sense of knowledge that exists from the beginning of life but has not been thought out.
It depends on the familial environment how much of this thought will be employed in a child’s life. When the environment facilitates the expression of the idiom, it has a transformational effect on the infant who experiences a kind of pleasure, which Bollas (1989, p. 19) describes with the Lacanian term jouissance, “the subject’s inalienable right to ecstasy.” In other words, parents set the foundation for what Bollas (1992) called being as character, and is conceptualized as the child’s ability to let his/her idiom be expressed by getting absorbed in playing (the process of play), even if this expression is not without risks (i.e., “what will happen to me if I surrender myself in playing?”).
The idiom reflects the fundamental and primary aloneness of the individual; “solitude is the container of self” (Bollas, 1989, p. 20). Bollas (1989) defined this inevitable and authentic aloneness as follows:
In our true self we are essentially alone. Though we negotiate our ego with the other and though we people our internal world with selves and others, and though we are spoken to and for by the Other that is speech (Lacan’s theory of the Symbolic) the absolute core of one’s being is a wordless, imageless solitude. We cannot reach this true self through insight or introspection. Only by living from this authorizing idiom do we know something of that person sample that we are. (p. 21)
By creatively combining the ideas of Winnicott and Lacan, Bollas describes aloneness as a (genetic) predisposition and fundamental condition, out of which the individual’s character emerges. Aloneness is regarded, therefore, as a unique nucleus of self, called idiom, which will always remain in a solitary state, that is, unthought, unknown, unspoken, and non‐shareable. This means that the human being, although “individual,” will always remain internally “divided” between the unconscious and the conscious aspects of self. However, from the beginning of life this solitary nucleus is destined to encounter the outer world and be in a dialectical tension with it. It is only when family acknowledges and respects the child’s uniqueness, allowing it to be “lived” in everyday interactions, that the child becomes able to develop his/her psychic life, based on mutual enrichment between the idiom and the environment.
The Capacity to Be Alone
Fort‐da
The wooden reel or fort‐da game, which is the famous developmental observation made by Freud (1920/1955a) on his 18‐month‐old grandson, clearly demonstrates the child’s ability to deal with solitude caused by the inevitable brief separation from his mother. In the game, the child repeatedly held the reel by the string that was tied around it and threw it in such a way that it disappeared into his cot; then, he pulled the reel again until it reappeared. This act was accompanied by the utterance o‐o‐o‐o (from the German word fort, which means gone) upon disappearance, and da (which means there) upon reappearance. The same child also used to look at a mirror, then fall on the floor and utter the words Baby o‐o‐o‐o, which means that he could make his image gone. In an earlier version of this game, he had the habit of throwing several small objects away, a game accompanied again by o‐o‐o‐o (here only disappearance was enacted).
Freud’s (1920/1955a) interpretation of the game was that the child, “during this long period of solitude” (p. 15), was able to renunciate the instinctual satisfaction caused by the mother’s presence, an ability that constitutes a major cultural achievement for the human being. In addition, by constructively repeating and working through disappearance and reappearance, the child transformed his passive experience of separation and solitude into an active one; he became master of the situation through binding. Thus, the distressing experience of separation from the mother can be a great source of gratification and pleasure if it is expressed in the symbolic level (i.e., words, playing), already from the second year of life. Indeed, Freud (1920/1955a) notices that this game may have been beneficial for the little boy, “a successful piece of self‐discipline,” as he wrote in an earlier study (Freud, 1900/1953), because when his mother died, about four years later, the boy did not show signs of grief. It seems that the game had prepared him for this irreparable loss.
Negative Hallucination
Based on several Freudian views, among which are the importance of absence, hallucinatory wish fulfillment (discussed in previous sections), and the notion of the negative, André Green (1986) used the term negative hallucination to describe a normal developmental phenomenon taking place in the early mother–child relationship. The inevitable separation from the mother leaves the infant physically alone. The relationship with her will be preserved only if the increase of tension or excitation caused by her absence is negativized by the infant. This means that the empty and silent space between the mother and the child will be occupied by the negative hallucination of the mother, which consists of primitive (i.e., hallucinatory or satisfying in fantasy) representations of the mother, and is defined by Green (1999, p. 276) as “a representation of the absence of representation.” The mother’s negative presence is transformed into a framing structure for the ego, enabling the child to wait and to tolerate absence as well as the related depressive affect. The framing structure “holds” the mind (in the Winnicottian sense) and constitutes the matrix of future (erotic and aggressive) investments.
Reflecting on Green’s views, I argue that this desirable outcome seems to have three developmental antecedents: (i) separation from the mother is not too prolonged, in order to avoid her effacement or fading away in the mind of the infant; (ii) the mother is available, reliable, and warm, in order to facilitate the emergence of the primitive representations and to ensure that the infant experiences holding and containment; and (iii) the mother is not an all‐present and intrusive figure, but is able to withdraw discretely leaving the infant alone for a reasonable amount of time, so that her perception be replaced
