Nocturnal Whispers

While acknowledging that the inevitable encounter with language is the traumatic encounter par excellence that structures subjectivity, this paper explores a fantasy that Freud remarked on many times, namely the fantasy of the primal scene. In focusing on this moment, be it real or imagined, Freud, in his scrutiny of infantile sexuality, draws our attention to the materiality of body and the centrality of the drives and explores their implications with regard to subjectivity.…