by Peter Kahl, 2025-10-04
This paper develops a foundational theoretical account of the newborn’s first cry as the earliest epistemic act and the crucible of psychological development. Rather than treating crying as reflex, it is reframed as an epistemic event: the embodied registration of contradiction at the threshold of life. The caregiver’s response constitutes the first fiduciary scaffold. Recognition transforms dissonance into resilience, while neglect, silencing, or inconsistency rehearse the logic of epistemic clientelism. To formalise these dynamics, the Kahl Model of Epistemic Dissonance (KMED) is extended into an infant–caregiver setting and implemented in Python-based simulations. These simulations function not as empirical data analysis but as conceptual scaffolding—stylised formalisations that make explicit how caregiving policies generate divergent developmental trajectories of epistemic autonomy, dissonance tolerance, and dependence. In so doing, the paper establishes infancy as the crucible of epistemic life, reframes attachment as epistemic trust, and repositions psychology and psychiatry as fiduciary sciences of recognition and contradiction.
cognitive dissonance, newborn crying, infancy, epistemic psychology, fiduciary care, epistemic clientelism, attachment theory, developmental psychology, epistemic event, resilience, recognition, silencing, parental scaffolding, epistemic autonomy, dependence, dissonance tolerance, computational modelling, psychiatry, epistemic trust, clinical psychology, ontology of infancy
Kahl, P. (2025). The newborn’s first cry as epistemic claim and foundation of psychological development: Attachment, autonomy, and resilience. Lex et Ratio Ltd. GitHub: https://github.com/Peter-Kahl/The-Newborns-First-Cry-as-Epistemic-Claim-and-Foundation-of-Psychological-Development DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17265357
KMED-I simulation resources are avaiable at https://github.com/Peter-Kahl/KMED-I-infant-cry-response-dyad-simulator .
First published in London by Lex et Ratio Ltd, 2025-10-04.
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