Introduction: Expelled from the Nest

In his book No and Yes, René Spitz writes that the ‘infrahuman animals divide into two main classes which manifest basically different feeding behaviours. These classes are named ‘altricial’ (in German Nesthoker, in French nidicoles) and ‘precocial’’ (in German Nestflüchter, in French nidifuges). The definition of these two classes shows that the human being, which at birth is in a state of powerlessness and relative immaturity and which, during a long period, will need to be fed, helped and cared for belongs to the class named ‘altricial’’ (Le non et le oui, Chapitre IV, p. 18; No and Yes, Chapter 5, p. 23). Thus it would be possible to conclude that humans are altricial beings upon which culture imposes becoming precocial beings, and without any transition between the two stages. Indeed, what is favoured by altricial beings is touch and warmth, whereas precocial beings favour sight and locomotion. And if touch intervenes for the latter group in the first time of nutrition, it is in a completely different way from that of the formers: a ‘pushing pressure’, notably of the head, (op. cit., pp. 22–3; op. cit., pp. 28–9) instead of the search for contact between the skins and mucous tissues of the infant and the mother.