Cultural determinants in infants and infantile determinants in cultural practices

Abstract This article is adapted from a panel presentation given at the International Psychoanalytical Association Congress in the summer of 2020. It argues for the centrality of cultural determinants in infant development and the centrality of infantile modes of consciousness in our cultural practices. It suggests that the inculcation of shared systems of meaning‐making, referring to cultures or ideologies, are antecedent to any sort of meaningful infant development. Culture is a medium, a common ground that is both external and mental. It provides the necessary tools for infants to develop the capacity to re‐present experience along lines that are prescribed and recognized by the large group or collective in which the dyad (mother–infant) and triad (oedipal family) are embedded. The analysis of the individual's lived experiences in the context of dependence on their parents/family is necessary to understand the composition and function of our patients' unconscious. We propose extending our lens to include the analysis of social and cultural derivatives, the impact of the systems that suffuse us, on our unconscious and lived experience. Doing so will extend our relevance and shine a beacon in previously neglected regions of the human unconscious that are ‘fundamentally social’.