Propping the Infant
Psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche has written a great deal on the concept of “propping” or “leaning-on.” Such is his translation of Freud’s notion of infantile attachment (Anlenung—and that Strachey translates as anaclisis, or anaclitic).
The Native-American technique of swaddling is a near literal version of this concept in action, in which the infant is wrapped and propped on a decorative cradle-board back-back. It is as if these mothers are wrapping up their babies as protection from the abyss; a practical means to ward off emptiness (sunyata).
