Concept
Symbiotic phase
The stage Mahler placed from about the second month to the fourth or fifth, in which the infant dimly perceives the mother as the source of satisfaction but behaves and feels as though it and she were one all-powerful system, a 'dual unity' within a single shared boundary. A good enough symbiosis was for Mahler the ground from which the child later 'hatches' into separateness; failure to enter it, or to leave it, lay at the root of the infantile psychoses she studied.
Development
Undated
introduced by Margaret Mahler
In Mahler's scheme, from about the second month the infant behaves as though it and the mother were a dual unity within one common boundary. Separation-individuation begins from this phase.
In On Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation, Vol. 1: Infantile Psychosis (1968);The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation (1975)
Relations
- introduced by Margaret Mahler
In Mahler's scheme, from about the second month the infant behaves as though it and the mother were a dual unity within one common boundary. Separation-individuation begins from this phase.
- gave rise to Symbiotic psychosis
Mahler explained symbiotic psychosis as a fixation at, or regression to, the symbiotic phase, when the child fails to differentiate a self from the mother.
- derives from Primary love
Mahler owed the idea of a mother-infant dual unity, which became her symbiotic phase, to the Balints and to Therese Benedek. The link to the Balints' primary love is therefore one of origin; the two concepts are not the same.
Works
- 1968
On Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation, Vol. 1: Infantile Psychosis
Margaret Mahler's monograph, written in collaboration with Manuel Furer and published in 1968 as the first of a planned two-volume study, gathers her work on psychotic children into a single theory of early development and its failures. It first sets out the concepts of symbiosis and separation-individuation: the infant passes from an early, objectless phase of normal autism into a symbiotic dual unity with the mother, out of which a separate self gradually emerges. On this basis it presents the symbiosis theory of infantile psychosis, which reads the psychoses of early childhood as derailments of that sequence, and distinguishes autistic from symbiotic forms. Later chapters take up diagnosis, clinical case material and recurrent patterns of mother–child interaction, and describe the treatment Mahler and Furer developed in New York, in which the mother takes part in the child's sessions. The book draws on non-analytic developmental research such as Piaget's and Werner's, ends with a summary of the theory, and has a bibliography of more than four hundred items.
- 1975
The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation
The book by Margaret Mahler, Fred Pine and Anni Bergman, published in 1975, is the first full theoretical account of normal separation-individuation. It grew out of the authors' observational research on mothers and young children in New York. It starts from the claim that the biological birth of a human infant and its psychological birth do not coincide. Biological birth is a single visible event; psychological birth is a slow inner process that unfolds over the first three years. Separation is the child's emergence from a symbiotic fusion with the mother. Individuation is the child's taking on of characteristics of its own. After an introduction and a history of the research setting, the book describes the forerunners of the process, normal autism and symbiosis. It then takes up the four subphases one by one: differentiation and the development of the body image; practicing; rapprochement; and the consolidation of individuality together with the beginnings of emotional object constancy. A further part follows five children, Bruce, Donna, Wendy, Teddy and Sam, through the subphases. Reflections follow on variations within the subphases, on the development of separation anxiety, basic mood and early identity, on core identity and the boundaries of the self, and on the significance of the rapprochement crisis. A final section sets out the research method: what data were collected, the reasoning behind the study and the strategies used to analyse the observations as systematic clinical research.
See also
People
References
- On Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation, Vol. 1: Infantile Psychosis1968Evidence for a relation
- The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation1975Evidence for a relation