What is it like to be an infant?

Abstract

Abstract In the philosophy of mind literature, consciousness is commonly defined not in terms of its physical correlates but rather its subjective character – the ‘something that it is like to be' an organism. In this conceptual article, this formulation is applied to the study of neonate subjectivity, giving rise to the question: what is it like to be an infant? I begin by outlining prevailing responses to this question from the perspectives of Bionian metapsychology, mentalization, and affective neuroscience. These accounts demonstrate significant consistency in their conceptualization of a first differentiation of raw sensory and affective experience into the binary states of comfort and discomfort which, in health, are co‐regulated with the caregiver in the context of the relational dyad. However, such coherence at the level of description does not amount to phenomenological access to what it is like to be an infant; reflection on this question reveals the epistemological gap between developed and infantile states of mind. I consider the utility of Bion's concepts of reverie and O as resources for negative capability in respect of the inevitable condition of not knowing. A brief vignette is presented to illustrate this framework. Implications in relation to infant observation and clinical psychoanalytic practice are described.