Disappointed expectations or maternal inadequacy

The author returns here to the study of the opposition between macro-rhythm s and micro-rhythms described in his past works. This opposition establishe s the subjectivity of the individual through idiosyncratic rhythms which ar e his own. If the macro-rhythms guarantee the narcissistic constitution of the subject, the role of micro-rhythms, in particular through games of surp rise, deception and false similarities, Is to introduce the dimension of a gap in the mother-baby dyad, a gap which is the only thing able to permit t olerance between what is expected and what actually occurs. For the author. this tolerance develops by way of maternal "failures", small defects which the mother uses to keep the dyad out of a potentiel symbiosis on one hand and to make this mother-child relational "disengagement" thinkable on the o ther. These failures organize the rhythmic interplay of the dyad, anchor th e prosody of the language exchange in the body and allow for the alternatio n of relational phases of engagement and disengagement. These "failures" ar e perhaps at the origin of the psychic capacity to withdraw cathexis, a nec essary capacity for the game of displacement and the transformation of repr esentations. Clinical examples illustrate these theoretical developments.