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The question of a baby’s origins can be thought about from two directions: from the present to the past, but also from the past to the present. After reflecting on the origins of our desire for children as adults (from the present to the past) based on a double negation, the author looks at the quest for origins as the foundation of the very possibility of thinking. The whole of life thus appears to be the fruit of a two-way process of après-coup, since the fate of the primal depends both on its resumption and on its transformation from one stage to the next (from the past to the present).