Human orality largely trespasses nutritional orality and covers a much bigger field than the only functional use of mouth. Orality is the link between somatic and psychic, from act to speech, at the crossroads of different drives, and becomes an opening between interior and exterior. It is also what makes the link, what creates a relation between the other and the world. Orality is therefore not only fundamental for our physiological survival but also the psychological one in as much as it places us in the intertwining relationship of man’s community. It also creates the first encounter with the world, develops infantile sexuality and supports the identity in as much as it is part of the foundations of identificatory realms. Digestion, physiological and psychological, will, during development, not only enable the incorporation but will support the appropriation process which transforms the non-Ego into Ego, the foreign object as part of oneself. From primary to secondary orality, we abandon the incorporation for more complex introjection processes.

Retreat, fixation or putting offside an operating orality, its major dysfunctions are the first stigmas of a major difficulty for an individual to be with himself and the others. Refusing to eat, or just filling up without nourishing, is attacking the connections of all nature (physiological, psychological or relational), it is refusing the measured relationship with another, it is fearing on one side intrusion, invasion, and on the other the emptiness of solitude, it is giving oneself the illusion of a reassuring autonomy, believing we do not need anyone or anything. It is often being scared of what is coming as well as being nostalgic of the past. It is breaking the relationship, in all cases, because we are scared of growing up, or because we are going to die, or because we are afraid of aging… When orality is troubled, it is not only the body that agonizes but also the psychic life, opening up to the other. Orality disorders at different times of life often translate an existential standstill. How do institutions and professionals accompany them? What answers are to be brought to different orality disorders? How can an operating oral function be accompanied in its reestablishment but also in its weaning which is the condition to the release from care?