Anxiety and the polarisation of beings

In this presentation, Dr Kamal Touma explores how the ‘contagion’ of anxiety between mother and child acts as a regulator for the distribution of the mother’s attention between her children. Out of this unequal distribution, two major patterns of connectedness/relatedness with the outside world emerge: the first is anxiety on losing the attention (that is anxiety on distancing) and the second, anxiety on getting the attention, (that is anxiety on closeness). Attention is defined here as the physical coupling between sensory emission and reception of stimuli.  

In this lecture, Dr Touma argues that every human being is more polarised towards one direction by its complementarity ; this polarisation helps beings bind together. It defines patterns of relatedness or fit with the world.  When severe, it underlies different mental pathologies and at its extremes stifles the emergence of a sense of self.