Organizers of the psyche

René Spitz's term, borrowed from embryology, for the nodal points in the infant's first two years at which separate currents of maturation and development converge and the psyche is reorganized at a more complex level. Each organizer is announced by a visible indicator: the smiling response at about three months, eight-month anxiety in the second half of the first year, and the gesture and word 'no' in the second year. Spitz held that when an organizer is not established in its time, later development builds on a faulty base. Later findings on the newborn's early capacities for interaction cast doubt on the embryological model.