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Babies and parents in theirs contexts and cultures. Lessons from the field An infant on its own doesn’t exist, we know that. He only exists in the arms of his mother, parents or groups to which the infant belongs : nuclear and extended family, social groups, society ... We have learned to recognize an infant’s cultural and social cradle. The works of anthropologists like Margareth Mead on the enculturation of infants and these of Marcel Mauss on body and infant care techniques have shown us the importance of this cradle. Mauss separated humanity into "cradle people" and "people without cradle" and showed the importance of the first moments and techniques of child care in structuring an infant in a cultural way : he becomes a group’s member. Later, researchers in intercultural psychology have highlighted the importance of cultural variations on the psychological structuring of infants. The way mothers hold their infants, they handled or massaged them…. Contexts privilege some kind of mother-infant interactions : visual (the virgin to western children), tactile or kinesthesic modalities (in western Africa or India). Investigators have shown the impact of these cultural variations on the development of an infant and his competencies. They have likewise shown the place and function of rites of passage and protection in the structuring of filiation and affiliation of infants. We can see now the importance of these observations in clinical work and research in two trans-cultural domains : 1- Here, the work with infants and their migrant families in our multicultural changing societies (trans-cultural clinical work). 2- There – in contexts of war and catastrophes, the work with infants victims of extreme traumas (clinical work in humanitarian situations). It is this clinical step that we are going to analyse in this conference. Our modern societies, where exchanges are accelerating, confront us to clinical work involving infants and migrant families. Two essential questions are coming then : 1 - What happens to cultural factors in migration ? 2 - What is the impact of migration on parents and infants born from parents in exile. We will study the research carried out by the Ecole de Bobigny (Paris, France) which shows the importance in clinical work of formulating the cultural representations parents have of their infants in order to create a real therapeutic alliance and to allow the construction of harmonious triadic parent-infant-context interactions. In addition to known levels of interaction (behavioural, affective and phantasmic), it is important to describe the cultural level of interactions, which constitutes the framework and context of all transmission. The cultural representations surrounding the baby can be divided into three levels of complexity : Furthermore, certain migrations are traumatic and the arrival of an infant forces the parents to face this trauma in order to construct their parental position harmoniously. All post-partum pathologies and the different forms that they can take depending on the cultural origins of the mother prove this : inhibitions related to witchcraft theories or on the contrary excitement linked to the representation of possession... Finally the therapist should elaborate his/her position concerning the difference in culture not to apply ethnocentric judgements either on the parents or the child. The elaboration of this cultural counter-transfer is indispensable in order to establish an efficient framework to permit parents to talk of their suffering with their choice of words and images. We will show an example of therapeutic setting which takes in account the individual and cultural level : this concerns the trans-cultural consultation of Bobigny (France). This mixed setting, with differing geometry (individual, group of therapists) offers mothers and their infants therapeutic consultations on a psychoanalytical model (Winnicott, Lebovici) with translators who speak the parent's mother tongue and therapists who are able to understand the representations in their different polarities. Finally we will study another trans-cultural situation, that one which takes us from the suburbs of Paris to contexts of war and catastrophes with Médecins Sans Frontières. In these fields, we are confronted with the extreme traumas of parents and their infants and the importance of cultural representations for the follow up of infants. Indeed, submitted to horror, mourning, several and repeated separations, infants suffer from multiple pathologies which are a sign of their vulnerability as well as also showing their capacities of resilience, consolation and reparation, if they are supported by their mothers, parents, groups. The elaboration of trauma and the use of cultural material are the two parameters for copying and resilience. Here and there, we will praise human complexity, his alterity, and the necessity to take into account this singularity in order to better understand and treat babies and theirs families what ever their colours.
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