Fantasia of the UnconsciousLawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
Philosophy
Fantasia of the Unconscious
Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
Psychoanalysis; Sex; Subconsciousness
And then, the moment a child is born, the face is alive. And the face
communicates direct with both planes of primary consciousness. The
moment a child is born, it begins to grope for the breast. And
suddenly a new great circuit is established, the four poles all
working at once, as the child sucks. There is the profound
desirousness of the lower center of sympathy, and the superior avidity
of the center of will, and at the same time, the cleaving yearning to
the nipple, and the tiny curiosity of lips and gums. The nipple of the
mother's breast is one of the great gates of the body, hence of the
living psyche. In the nipple terminate vivid nerves which flash their
very powerful vibrations through the mouth of the child and deep into
its four great poles of being and knowing. Even the nipples of the man
are gateways to the great dynamic flow: still gateways.
Touch, taste, and smell are now active in the baby. And these senses,
so-called, are strictly sensations. They are the first term of the
child's mental knowledge. And on these three _cerebral_ reactions the
foundation of the future mind is laid.
The moment there is a perfect polarized circuit between the first four
poles of dynamic consciousness, at that moment does the mind, the
terminal station, flash into cognition. The first cognition is merely
sensation: sensation and the remembrance of sensation being the first
element in all knowing and in all conception.
The circuit of touch, taste, and smell must be well established,
before the eyes begin actually to see. All mental knowledge is built
up of sensation and of memory. It is the continually recurring
sensation of the touch of the mother which forms the basis of the
first conception of the mother. After that, the gradually
discriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. Till
gradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three
senses, as medium of correspondence and of knowledge.
And while, of course, the sensational _knowledge_ is being secreted in
the brain, in some much more mysterious way the living individuality
of the child is being developed in the four first nuclei, the four
great nerve-centers of the primary field of consciousness and being.
As time goes on, the child learns to see the mother. At first he sees
her face as a blur, and though he knows her, knows her by a direct
glow of communication, as if her face were a warm glowing life-lamp
which rejoiced him. But gradually, as the circuit of touch, taste, and
smell become powerfully established; gradually, as the individual
develops in the child, and so retreats towards isolation; gradually,
as the child stands more immune from the mother, the circuit of
correspondence extends, and the eyes now communicate across space, the
ears begin to discriminate sounds. Last of all develops discriminate
hearing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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