Trauma and the Wise Baby

Trauma psychoanalysis

Abstract

This paper expands upon Ferenczi’s concept of the wise baby and explores the dynamics of ignorance and compensatory ideals of wisdom as reactions to trauma and as manifestations of "double conscience", shame dynamics and Oedipal shame. Focusing on feelings of ignorance, of knowing and not knowing and their relation to trauma, the author elaborates on the dynamics of fantasies of wisdom, adumbrating implications for psychoanalytic technique.