[Skin contact as a first experience. From touching to caressing].

This article consists of a review and a report on work carried out in the Laboratory of Developmental Neuropsychology of the Collège de France. Are considered: 1) Ethological and psychoanalytical concepts. 2) The role of the skin in the evolution of the infant-mother relationship during the foetal, neonate and first years of life.

[Wanting a child].

To want a child and to want to have a child are notions receiving renewed interest ever since the generalization of contraception and even more recently, the new methods of procreation. These two notions are compared and tested against biological data across historical, psychoanalytic and sociological works. A brief resume of research done with mothers of newborns underlines the ambiguity and the complex and dynamic character of the question.