Concept
Eight-month anxiety
The distress an infant shows in the second half of the first year when a stranger approaches: turning away, hiding its face, crying. René Spitz, who named it, took it as the first true anxiety and as the sign that the infant now tells its mother apart from everyone else and has formed a libidinal object; he read it as a reaction to the mother's absence, the stranger's face being registered as not the mother's. In his scheme it is the second organizer of the psyche, marking the stage of the libidinal object proper. It is distinguished from separation anxiety, and attachment theory later gave its own account of the fear of strangers.
- Broader concept
- Organizers of the psyche
- Introduced by
- René Spitz
- Key works
- 1
- Related
- Separation anxiety
introduced by
- René Spitz Spitz named the infant's fear of strangers eight-month anxiety, called it the first true anxiety and made it the mark of the libidinal object proper.
diverges from
- Separation anxiety Spitz explained the infant's distress at a stranger by the mother's absence, but the two anxieties have been held to be clinically distinct, since each can appear without the other.