Concept
Symbiotic psychosis
A form of childhood psychosis that Mahler set apart in 1952 from early infantile autism. Where the autistic child seems never to have taken the mother in as a living presence, the symbiotic child clings to a delusion of being fused with her; the breakdown tends to come between the second and fourth year, when growing up faces the child with separateness, and brings panic, the loss of skills already gained and a blurring of the boundaries of the self. Mahler read it as a fixation at, or a regression to, the symbiotic phase, and at a therapeutic nursery founded with Manuel Furer she treated such children together with their mothers.
- Introduced by
- Margaret Mahler
- Key works
- 2
- Related
- Symbiotic phase
introduced by
- Margaret Mahler 1952 In her 1952 paper on child psychosis Mahler set the symbiotic psychoses of early childhood apart from the autistic ones. She later grounded the distinction in the normal autistic and symbiotic phases.
developed by
- Manuel Furer 1968 Furer was Mahler's collaborator on the 1968 study of infantile psychosis, which grew out of their joint work with psychotic children and their mothers.
derives from
- Symbiotic phase 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.