Today's key stories. One concerned the issue of babies in care being repeatedly moved from one foster mother to another and the demands of MPs for legislation limiting moves to two in the first year of life because of the adverse consequences for emotional development. The other was about a teenager remanded on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm to a girl in school, stabbing her in the face with a knife. At last emotional development has got a mention, even two moves are two too many but at least the first year of life is being recognised. What would probably not be recognised is the connection in these two stories because it is unlikely that the child remanded is one who was moved several times between foster carers as a baby. But there are plenty of other first year experiences that could have similar effects. (18-11-05) Hard to keep pace with events, it seems from the later newscast that the girl was stabbed with scissors, or perhaps that was another stabbing. Makes no real difference. I have described in chapter 1 my internal image of a maenad leaping up from the dark with a dagger in each hand dripping blood and how I connected this with my experience at the breast of a stressed wartime mother. The frontispiece to Part III provides another example, as does my client Rosita with her image of a dagger and her dream of her killer self described I think in chapter 4. Experiences of being handled and related to by a stressed mother can lead to internal images of violence involving knives because the preverbal experience is best expressed by cutting ("cutting words" "cut him dead") so that later knowledge acquired from storybooks etc adds the implements. The first year experiences provide a template for later ones that build towards acting out in reality. Later experiences of course include observation of violent acts on TV etc. The hominin psyche cannot distinguish between fact and fiction and the sapiens psyche of a teenager would have less control.
