Further Reflections on Baby Mia

Baby Mia with eyes open (2 weeks)

I.

Babies: what on earth do they think about, when they stare with eyes full of inhuman darkness?

I'm not certain, but I find myself agreeing with D. H. Lawrence that it's "by no means a gaze of innocence", but is rather one of "profound, pre-visual discerning."

It's obvious (is it not?) that the infant looks across a strange gulf of some kind and does so with such cruel objectivity that we instinctively attempt to chase the look away with kisses. 

II.

It's mistaken to believe babies are born blind, like kittens. For even at birth they can see something of the world and can make out the shape of objects, like a maternal breast for example, if these things are within very close range. But pretty much everything else is a black and white blur to which they are supremely indifferent.     

By two weeks, they can just about recognise a face (or a camera lens) and are able to hold eye contact for a few seconds - as baby Mia demonstrates above. But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that they have any feelings for us, nor expect to get a genuine smile out of them (any appearance of such is purely an automatic reflex, more likely to indicate the passing of gas rather than the signalling of affection). 

III.

Barely able to perceive, babies have no clear ideas of anyone or anything and remain darkly self-centered. That doesn't mean babies are stupid or selfish. It just means they aren't mentally conscious and live not from the mind, but from the dynamic centre of first consciousness acting powerfully at the solar plexus.

In other words, it's from their little round tummies that they know "with a directness of knowledge that frightens us and may even seem abhorrent". 

And what does the infant know?

It knows that having lost the peace and joy of the womb and had its umbilical cord severed, it must develop ever-further into single identity. Exiled from uterine paradise, "no wonder there are storms of rage and separation."

Ultimately, baby Mia must scream herself into being and independence; for a soul cannot come into its own through love alone. 

See: D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

For earlier Lawrentian reflections on Baby Mia, click here; for Nietzschean reflections on Baby Mia, click here.