Henri Wallon

French developmental psychologist and Marxist politician (1879–1962), founder of the Enfance journal. For the purposes of this wiki, Wallon matters as the primary empirical source of Merleau-Ponty's 1950–51 Sorbonne course on *The Child's Relations with Others*. Wallon's Les origines du caractère chez l'enfant (1934, 2nd ed. 1949) provides the developmental phases, concepts, and case observations that structure MP's Ch 4: the postural schema, syncretic sociability, transitivism, mimesis as postural impregnation, the specular image's phases, jealousy and cruelty.

Key Points

  • MP takes over wholesale Wallon's developmental framework — the progression from pre-communication through syncretic sociability through the crisis at three years — while diverging from Wallon on the interpretation of the specular image (MP favors Lacan over Wallon's intellectualist reduction).
  • Wallon is the originator of "syncretic sociability" as a technical term in French developmental psychology; MP cites him by name repeatedly.
  • Wallon is also a major theorist of the postural function and its role in expression — "a postural impregnation of my own body by the conducts I witness" — which MP develops as the mechanism of imitation and intercorporeity.
  • Like MP, Wallon combined phenomenological-gestalt psychology with a Marxist political orientation (he was a Communist deputy 1945–46 and served in the Ministry of Education). This background informed but did not limit MP's adoption.

Details

Primary Text: Les origines du caractère chez l'enfant

Wallon's Les origines du caractère chez l'enfant (Paris 1934, 2nd ed. 1949) is MP's principal cited source. The book describes developmental phases in detail:

  • Pre-communication (introceptive phase, 0–3 months)
  • External perception of others (3–6 months, beginning with voice)
  • Syncretic sociability ("incontinent sociability," 6–12 months)
  • The specular image acquisitions (4–12 months for other's image, 8–18+ months for own image)
  • Crisis at three years (emergence of the ego, assertion of perspective)

MP follows Wallon's sequence. His divergences are on interpretation, not chronology.

Key Wallonian Concepts

  • Postural schema / corporeal schema: the body as a system of postural readiness. Wallon extends Head's and Schilder's concept into the expressive register.
  • Postural impregnation: the body's capacity to take on the conducts it witnesses — seeing the chirping bird prepares the child to mimic bird-sounds.
  • Syncretic sociability: the phase of self-other indistinction, 6–12 months.
  • Transitivism: the attribution of one's own states to others (or vice versa); see transitivism.
  • Incontinent sociability: Wallon's phrase for the outburst of social behaviors around 6–12 months.
  • Mimesis / mimicry: the power of taking on gestures as one's own; Wallon treats this as a "postural function" rather than a cognitive imitation.
  • Ultra-chose: per Saint Aubert E&C II, Wallon is the source of MP's late-period concept ultra-chose (the "more-than-thing" structure of perceived things; central to E&C II Ch III). Saint Aubert tracks the philological inheritance from Wallon's Les origines du caractère into MP's Sorbonne-era reading and onward into the late ontology — a thread that the Sorbonne-period adoption of Wallon's framework (1950-51) makes visible only in retrospect, after Saint Aubert's archival reconstruction.

Where MP Diverges

The main divergence: Wallon interprets the reduction of the specular image as an intellectual operation (the child gradually substitutes an "ideal space" for the perceived space of the image). MP rejects this intellectualist reading in favor of Lacan's: the image's fascination and its de-realizing function cannot be explained by a cognitive synthesis. MP's interpretation is affective and structural; Wallon's is cognitive.

But this divergence is localized. Elsewhere — on jealousy, cruelty, mimesis, the crisis at three years — MP follows Wallon closely and cites him by name.

The Authoritative Role

MP cites Wallon more frequently in Ch 4 than any other author — more even than Freud or Lacan. This is because Wallon is the empirical ground of MP's developmental claims. MP is not primarily a developmental psychologist; he is a phenomenologist who uses Wallon's rigorous observational work as material for a phenomenological reading of intersubjectivity.

Connections

  • is source for syncretic-sociability, transitivism, and the developmental phases of specular-image.
  • is the philological source of ultra-chose — per Saint Aubert's reconstruction, MP's late "ultra-chose" inherits from Wallon's developmental framework. The Sorbonne-period adoption (1950-51) carries forward into the late ontology.
  • provides conceptual apparatus for body-schema as extended into postural expression.
  • is differentiated from by jacques-lacan — MP endorses Lacan over Wallon on the specular image's affective significance.
  • is background for intercorporeity in its developmental register — postural impregnation and transitivism are the developmental mechanisms.
  • is contemporary with jean-paul-sartre, claude-lefort, sigmund-freud, edmund-husserl — within the psychological and philosophical currents MP engages.
  • is also cited by MP in contexts outside the 1950–51 course; the Phenomenology of Perception (1945) already uses Wallon's work as background for the body schema.

Open Questions

  • How does Wallon's explicit Marxism interact with MP's adoption of his framework? MP does not discuss Wallon's politics in Ch 4, but Wallon's framework is itself non-neutral — it presupposes that social formation is constitutive, not additive.
  • Is Wallon's "incontinent sociability" phase (6–12 months) observationally replicable under contemporary developmental methods? The specific claim is in tension with some later data on infant self/other distinction.
  • What is the exact relation between Wallon's "postural schema" and Head's / Schilder's original concept? Wallon's extension into expression (postural impregnation) may be his original contribution.

The Welsh Sorbonne edition: Wallon as both ally and figure-to-be-corrected

The Welsh/Verdier edition of MP's Sorbonne lectures (more complete than the Cobb 1964 Primacy of Perception translation) supplies a sharper picture of MP's relation to Wallon than the wiki has previously recorded. Wallon is both ally and figure-to-be-corrected: ally on developmental phases, postural schema, syncretic sociability, transitivism, ultra-things, anticipation-as-rule; figure-to-be-corrected on the intellectualist reduction of the mirror-image.

The cardinal correction is at CPP ch. 7 §XIV (line 5562):

Wallon falls prey to the very danger that he himself has pointed out; he interprets the child's experience in adult-objective terms.

MP charges Wallon with adultomorphism in spite of himself: Wallon explicitly named the error (the "interpret the child in adult terms" temptation) and develops the alternative (transitivism, syncretic sociability, ultra-things), yet his intellectualist reading of the mirror-image (image-as-detached-skin via redistribution of spatial values, "double totalization") succumbs to the very vice he diagnosed. See adultomorphism.

The Welsh edition also documents:

  • Wallon's "anticipation is the rule" as a developmental principle (CPP ch. 4 §IV.C, line 5246): the child's psychological "availability" lets him assume roles his organism cannot execute. Phases are provisional stabilizations, not natural kinds; "the age of the child" not "the age of childhood."
  • Wallon's "ultra-things" (CPP ch. 3 §VIII; ch. 7 §XII): horizons of reality the child does not doubt but toward which he cannot take an objectifying attitude. Ultra-things persist for the adult too (death, the absolute "house" of childhood, deep time). See ultra-things.
  • The Wallon-Piaget arbitration on representation of the world (CPP ch. 7 §XII): Wallon's things vs. ultra-things distinction lets MP convict Piaget of misreading the child's responses as theses about reality, when many of Piaget's questions were ultra-thing questions.
  • Postural schema as developmental ground: pre-3 months no total body schema; soldering 3-6 months via myelination (CPP ch. 5 §III). The Welsh edition makes the developmental stratum of body-schema explicit. See body-schema.

The Sorbonne lectures therefore document MP's relation to Wallon as neither pure adoption nor rejection, but as a relationship of methodological collaboration with localized correction: Wallon's vocabulary becomes MP's own (line 5562 verbatim), but Wallon's intellectualist moves are corrected with the Gestaltung-against-intellectual-synthesis principle (drawing on Lacan's affective register).

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1964-primacy-of-perception — Ch 4 "The Child's Relations with Others" cites Wallon throughout (Cobb translation, partial). Key references: pp. 132–145 (Wallon's framework introduced), pp. 145–160 (specular image, where MP's divergence from Wallon appears), pp. 161–170 (syncretic sociability, transitivism, jealousy). Primary source: Les origines du caractère chez l'enfant, 2nd ed., Paris 1949.
  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — establishes Wallon as the philological source of MP's ultra-chose (Saint Aubert's HUB concept for E&C II Ch III). Wallon-Piaget contrast is one of the through-lines of Saint Aubert's reconstruction of MP's late ontology.
  • merleau-ponty-2010-child-psychology-pedagogy — Welsh/Verdier complete edition of the 1949–52 Sorbonne lectures. Wallon is the principal positive resource; MP cites Origines du caractère, Origines de la pensée, and Wallon's methodological writings throughout. Cardinal corrections: ch. 7 §XIV (line 5562) Wallon's self-betrayal in mirror-image treatment; ch. 4 §IV.C (anticipation-as-rule); ch. 3 §VIII + ch. 7 §XII (ultra-things); ch. 5 §III (developmental body-schema soldering).