René Roussillon : Drive and Intersubjectivity

The author tries to conceive of a psychoanalytical conception of intersubjectivity that would respect the double reference to the unconscious and to infantile sexuality. He believes it is necessary to emphasize the “ messenger ” value of the drive and its modes of representing. Two clinical vignettes show how the drive is composed or decomposed according to the response of the other-subject object, as well as the unconscious dimensions of the messages acted out in the face-to-face setting. Then a decomposition of different “ bits ” of the experience of satisfaction opens up the question of infantile sexuality which includes the other-subject in its organization. The question of adolescence is revisited as the moment when infantile sexuality is found again, and redefined as a function of adolescent sexuality’s “ body-to-body ”, but also as the danger of confusion associated with this find.