Book/s, by Micheline
Weinstein
ø
Children with Emerald Eyes
by
Mira
RothenbergTranslated by Yona Dureau
« Des
enfants au regard de pierre »
Paris, Le Seuil,
Spring 1979
24 years ago
Des
enfants au regard de pierre, the translation
of Children
with Emerald Eyes
was published by Le Seuil 24 years
ago. The book is the testimony of
Mira Rothenberg’s work and life besides
children and sometimes adults as well
who are most often called schizophrenic,
autistic, i.e. in other words, psychotics.
The French title was not too bad,
still why was emerald translated as
“pierre”, “stone”?
A stone is a stone, any kind of stone,
be it hard or crumbly, dirty or clean,
trodden on or hardly within reach,
the word “stone” per se
may have sounded rather harsh, cold
and final to the ears of the editor’s
team, supplanting the second word
of the title, “les yeux”,
the eyes. Indeed, the emerald is a
stone, yet it is a precious stone,
a shining and secret object lodged
within the core of a rock of common
appearance.
Hence, still ignorant of what had
led the author to compile her testimony
within one volume, the title Des Enfants
au regard de pierre rather than Children
with Emerald Eyes meant something
entirely different, and implied entirely
different readers. One would enter
the book heavily laden with prejudices,
commonplaces about schizophrenic and
autistic people, filled with preferably
abstract ideas conveyed by the
Era’s pedantic, obscurantist, and
snobbish thinking authorities.
Children with Emerald Eyes, hence
Enfants aux yeux d’Émeraude,
with that precious stone, the emerald
about which a legend tells that “the
hermetic tradition would add that
an emerald [much sought after for
it pierces through the dimmest darkness]
fell from Lucifer’s brow during his
Fall.” This book of testimonies
written by Mira Rothenberg would then
be read according to a very different
approach. It then became necessary
to start with creating an inner vacuum
inside oneself, in order to be entirely
open to listen to it, as well as to
listen to each one of the children
in whom everyone of us can recognize
some part of him/her/self.
Psychoanalysis
in France in 1979 and still today
Whoever may want a subjective perception
of the topic may refer to the texts
that have been published for 35 years,
and that can now be found on websites
or published as books and still currently
sold.
Let us be brief. In France, children
psychoanalysis as well as psychoanalytic
practise on isolated children interests
psychoanalysts up to the limit of
finding in that practise what they
are trying to find in it, i.e. what
one comes to it with, e.g. the evidence
needed to prove one’s theory right,
or to prove how right or how revolutionary
another searcher’s theory is, or to
prove the existence of God. This is
so much the case, that the child turns
out to become a foil for a given theory,
on the basis of the observation of
external, physical expressions of
his/her sufferings, which were even
reduced to formulas by Lacan followed
on that point by his disciples.
In France there is no place for the
body, except for the exception of
Dolto’s practise with children. Perrier
had noted Dolto’s exception as he
said,
One
always turns to her when something
on the body side has not been theorised
[...] Still, one always turns to
her, and simultaneously she is a
woman. If I would try to characterize
Dolto’s style in her therapies and
in her children’ analyses, I should
say that she is always on the metaphorical
line, which allows small children
not to use their body to question
that idea, but rather to avoid being
used by their own bodies.
Françoise Dolto was Dolto,
whereas Mira - each one of them with
her own style and with the outlined
imprints of her old phobias which
are, in Perrier’s words “promises
of birth” - each one of them
does not refrain from any attempt
if we speak of the body’s involvement
- to try to find any access into fortresses
which are not empty, since they may
even sometimes explode, disclosing
then their scattered content like
myriads of crystals.
It is highly improbable that a theoretical
discourse may hold, however knowledgeable
and authoritative it may be, when
confronted with the living testimony
of persons Mira Rothenberg asks us
to watch and to listen to, and confronted
with what she forces us to know.
The body may often be perceived as
a third person in the clinical practise
with those children, a third person
as Perrier defined it for the analyst,
who is
always
as a third person between the relativity
of his knowledge and the Fall of
the angels of Truth.
The
body may be the indispensable third
person needed to establish a makeshift
bridge when facing a direct, violent
confrontation with language. Sometimes,
other mediators, like a game of draughts,
allow the expression, the verbal articulation,
of the words of truth, between two
turns, as if by chance.
I recall, between other misadventures,
the case of a very little “beur”
boy, who was then two and a half years
old, diagnosed as autistic and who
was taken away from me after three
sessions because I had held the child
at arms’ length at the top floor of
the building, at my office’s balcony
so that he could exchange with the
clouds and pigeons, even once with
a rainbow. Meanwhile, as it was the
end of the winter, his accompanying
nurse (so called “maternante”,
between “maternelle” to
speak of a nursery school and “maternelle”
as an adjective, “motherly”,
“maternal”, what a choice
of a term!) would help herself with
a hot chocolate which she would sip
and relish, while reading some magazine
or some book.
The direction of the institute that
had sent me this little boy returned
a verdict: my method did not follow
Dolto’s practises. Why, precisely,
I do, and anyone may check as she
has left many references to it in
quite a number of her books. I even
saw her do it to have a child accept
to stand on his legs, to take but
one example, without being held by
an apparatus or left alone lying as
a recumbent figure on a tomb, as a
shmate, in a state of dereliction.
Thus the child was taken away from
me, but as if he had foreseen that
separation, he spoke right upon his
arrival at the institute after the
third and last session with me. He
uttered a well-built sentence with
a subject, a verb and an object. He
plainly said in five words to his
accompanying nurse what he thought
of the directress, in her presence.
What makes it possible to read Mira
Rothenberg’s book is the liberation
from current, mostly university or
scholarly, instructions, to work with
children the way each one of us feels
appropriate, i.e., at first to follow
their radar, their sonar, since, as
during an analysis, we do not know
anything, as shown by one of Freud’s
first discoveries,
« The
task consisted in learning from
the patient something one did not
know, and which he did not know
himself. » Freud 1909
• Clark University
Apart from the fact
that these children were not asking
for anything. Yet if one looks out
for them because their suffering is
unbearable to us, then they turn out
to want to know.
Mira’s
Book
The
enthusiasm for anti-psychiatry, the
blooming seventies waned within the
glimpse of an eye, and history repeats
itself endlessly for the children,
then for the grand-children who have
inherited the monstrosity invented
by the human race, and who have become
parents and then grand-parents, engendered
by war, collaboration, transportation,
extermination, and still a bit of
humanity, although that latter nearly
failed to counterbalance and came
out in a ghastly shape for quite a
while.
Is there any attempt made today to
make life more or less bearable for
those autistic, schizophrenic, and
psychotic children to live among human
beings ? There is not much to be heard
of for that matter, as if those children
had joined, within their various specialized
institutes, the world of mad adults
in psychiatric units, the world of
the aged in their retirement residence
as waiting halls of death (les “mouroirs”
en français), be they luxurious,
worlds where horror hides away from
men’ eyes within the thick silence
from which no echo can be perceived.
There is no psychoanalysis of psychotic
children, and no congress of
analysts on infantile psychosis will
ever prove the opposite, dozens of
books, reports of meetings and publications
of colloquiums debate on that topic
and enlighten us on that matter.
Work with autistic children is still
deprived of a name, and one may wonder
if it will have one one day to belong
to the normalization of the needs
of nosography and nomenclature
?
Mira Rothenberg, who lives in New
York, comes from Vilno, far out there
in Poland, where Jews would emigrate
from when they could back to 1933,
and afterwards when they were lucky
enough to do it until 1944, at which
date those who had been stuck in the
mouse-trap were exterminated.
My reading of Mira’s book, what I
hear in her work throughout her text,
comes from learning, as a girl, of
life and death in the “ Vilno
” of Poland, Germany, and Russia,
of whole Europe, with that story,
with these “out there”
which always turn out to designate
the final solution.
All the rest is silence.
Hence, instead of giving a report
on her book, i.e. instead of giving
a skilful paraphrase of it, I worked
through analogies, taking from Freud’s
first tools of analysis, and I will
merely reproduce some passages, which
I will sometimes add a line of commentary
or a title to.
Ø
[All
mentioned passages below are taken
from, Mira Rothenberg, Children
with emerald eyes - Histories of
Extraordinary Boys and Girls. Foreword
by Peter A. Levine, North Atlantic
Books, Berkeley, California, and
Ergos Institute, Lyons, Colorado,
2002.]
Introductory Caption
Children… p. 70
The Analytical Scene ; During
a Session, the Game of Draughts
Children… p. 41
The Institute for Drifting Youths
Children… pp. 97-98
Following the Transportation
of the European Jews
Children… p. 107
Chaim’s Father
Children… p. 108
Chaim’s Mother
Children… p. 109
Chaim and His Mother
Children… p. 110
Chaim
Children… pp. 108-109, 114
Psychiatrisation of Chaim’s
State one year and a Half Later
Children… pp 120-121
The Dismay of The Medical Team
in Charge
Children… p. 123
Chaim Is Eleven Years Old
Children… pp. 128-129
Sarah Refuses and Breaks Contact
Sarah’s Friend
Children… pp. 136-137
Some Time Later, Faeces = Baby
Children… p. 142
Sarah’s Gaze Goes From
Her Hand To Mira
Children… p. 146
If One Would Try To Paraphrase
This Passage
in A Scholarly Style, It Would
Be Unreadable
Children… p. 147
The Primitive Scene
Children… p. 148
Épilogue
Children… p. 152
Danny, The Failure
Children… p. 198
Peter, within the Prison of a
Fortified Camp
Children… pp. 221, 229
[Note M. W. - Fernand Deligny, with
whom I had worked for 14 years,
had noted that very impressive point
in the case of a number of autistic,
he would prefer to say quite rightly
“ mute ”, persons.
Yet he did not develop that point
further. It seems that he had reached
his limit there.]
Counter-Transference
Children… p 230
Mira Is at Work, Peter Must Know,
So Must Mira
Children… pp. 232-233, 235,
239
Hatred, Cleaving
Children… pp. 240-241
Peter’s Drawings, from
pp. 250 to 253
[Note M. W. - The drawing of a living
being or of a thing first appears
as scattered pieces. Progressively,
the scattered pieces join the body,
which is represented by an oval
shape, horizontally, one finds a
thing, a bus, which stands upright
to create a living person. The body
appears then, reunited, with the
head set on it, its arms and legs.
Then comes the sex differenciation..
A girl, with a skirt. A boy with
a trouser only on one leg. The next
step consists in the representation
of hair, which humanizes the figure,
the ears of the girl wearing a skirt.
We do not have the graphic order
nor do we know if the other senses
apart from the sense of hearing
Peter knows – sight, smell,
taste, and flavor of things –
have appeared, or whether it was
not necessary anymore since Peter
had started to build a language
relationship with Mira.]
Peter Knows, so Does Mira
Children… pp. 250-251
Peter is Complete
Children… p. 252
Peter is Born
Children… pp. 253, 268, 269
“ Human Comedy ”
Children… pp. 274-275
Peter, The Tragedy of Uselessness
Children… pp. 276, 277
The reason why it took 24 years
to finally testify of the quality
of Mira Rothenberg’s book, which
has no equivalent in France, is
that today we have the concrete,
material means to make this public
testimony ; moreover and mostly,
as in the case of those children,
the children of “over there”,
time, like the time of Unbewusst,
does not leave any print on the
ego which we do not know. I did
it as well as I could, leaving the
scene as much as possible
to those children’ voices which
Mira Rothenberg had brought bare
to us, even when they would not
speak, even when they did not want
or could not speak. She is the echo
of their silence.
M. W.
2003, End of August
ψ
[Psi] • LE TEMPS DU NON
cela
ne va pas sans dire
© 1989 / 2008
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