The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant Quotes

“toddlers.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“The biological birth of the human infant and the psychological birth of the individual are not coincident in time. The former is a dramatic, observable, and well-circumscribed event; the latter a slowly unfolding intrapsychic process.”
― Anni Bergman, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation

“the earlier the occurrence of traumata and the more unfavorable the earliest phases of extrauterine existence—the symbiotic phase, the differentiation subphase and the practicing subphase, that is, the first 14 to 15 months of life—the greater the proclivity to later, severe personality difficulties, borderline pathology, or even psychosis. This appears to be true only if (1) the infant’s innate endowment is greatly abnormal, and/or if (2) the experiential circumstances are stressful and consistently counteract subphase-specific progress far beyond the “average expectable.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“Three variables involving the mother are of particular importance in shaping, promoting, or hindering the individual child’s adaptability, drive, and ego development, and the beginning structuralization of precursors of his sugerego: The mother’s personality structure. The developmental process of her parental function (Benedek, 1959). The mother’s conscious, but particularly unconscious, fantasy regarding the individual child. These three variables, together with the child’s potentialities, determine the degree to which the child is able to fulfill the mother’s specific fantasies and expectations. These variables are, of course, interdependent.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“have maintained a rather personal interest in one specific aspect of the rich heritage that Freud bestowed upon us, namely, his emphasis on the fact that a lifelong, albeit diminishing, emotional dependence on the mother is a universal truth of human existence.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“into”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“WITH the acquisition of upright, free locomotion and with the closely following attainment of that stage of cognitive development that Piaget (1936) regards as the beginning of representational intelligence (which will culminate in symbolic play and in speech), the human being has emerged as a separate and autonomous person. These two powerful “organizers” (Spitz, 1965) constitute the midwives of psychological birth. In this final stage of the “hatching” process, the toddler reaches the first level of identity—that of being a separate individual entity (Mahler, 19586). By the middle of the second year of life, the infant has become a toddler.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“CHAPTER 7
The Fourth Subphase: Consolidation of Individuality and the Beginnings of Emotional Object Constancy FROM the point of view of the separation-individuation process, the main task of the fourth subphase is twofold: (1) the achievement of a definite, in certain aspects lifelong, individuality, and (2) the attainment of a certain degree of object constancy.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“The clinical outcome of these rapprochement crises will be determined by: (1) the development toward libidinal object constancy; (2) the quantity and quality of later disappointments (stress traumata); (3) possible shock traumata; (4) the degree of castration anxiety; (5) the fate of the oedipus complex; and (6) the developmental crises of adolescence—all of which function within the context of the individual’s constitutional endowment.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“we found that we could subdivide rapprochement into three periods; (1) beginning rapprochement; (2) the rapprochement crisis; and (3) individual solutions of this crisis, resulting in patternings and personality characteristics with which the child enters into the fourth subphase of separation-individuation, the consolidation of individuation.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“The birth of the child as an individual comes about when, in response to the mother’s selective response to his cueing, the child gradually alters his behavior. “It is the specific unconscious need of the mother that activates out of the infant’s infinite potentialities, those in particular that create for each mother ‘the child’ who reflects her own unique and individual needs. This process takes place, of course, within the range of the child’s innate endowments” (Mahler,”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“The transitional object itself described by Winnicott (1953) is a monument to the need for this contact with the mother’s body, which is so touchingly expressed in the infant’s insistent preference for an object which is lasting, soft, pliable, warm to the touch, but especially in the demand that it remain saturated with body odors.1. .”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“Body Image AT about 4 to 5 months of age, at the peak of symbiosis, behavioral phenomena seem to indicate the beginning of the first subphase of separation-individuation, namely differentiation. During the symbiotic months —through that activity of the pre-ego which Spitz has described as coenesthetic receptivity—the young infant has familiarized himself with the mothering half of his symbiotic self, as indicated by the unspecific, social smile. This smile gradually becomes the specific (preferential) smiling response to the mother, which is the crucial sign that a specific bond between the infant and his mother has been established (Bowlby, 1958).”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“The normal symbiotic phase marks the all-important phylogenetic capacity of the human being to invest the mother within a vague dual unity that forms the primal soil from which all subsequent human relationships form. The separation-individuation phase is characterized by a steady increase in awareness of the separateness of the self and the “other” which coincides with the origins of a sense of self, of true object relationship, and of awareness of a reality in the outside world.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“The eye-to-eye encounter with even a masked face moving in a vertical direction is the trigger, the organizer or perhaps the “releaser,” of the unspecific, so-called social smiling response. This unspecific smiling response marks the entrance into the stage of the need-satisfying object relationship. There is temporary cathexis of the mother and/or her ministrations through the pressure of “need.” This corresponds to the entry into that period which we have named the symbiotic phase.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“From the second month on, dim awareness of the need-satisfying object marks the beginning of the phase of normal symbiosis, in which the infant behaves and functions as though he and his mother were an omnipotent system—a dual unity within one common boundary.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“the phenomena of the reunion—”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“Separation and individuation are conceived of as two complementary developments: separation consists of the child’s emergence from a symbiotic fusion with the mother (Mahler, 1952), and individuation consists of those achievements marking the child’s assumption of his own individual characteristics.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“But the principal psychological achievements of this process take place in the period from about the fourth or fifth month to the thirtieth or thirty-sixth month, a period we refer to as the separation-individuation phase.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“achievement of a separateness in the presence of mother.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“Mahler, through her earlier work as a pediatrician and her psychoanalytic work with psychotic children, had become interested in how, during the first three years of life, a child had to separate from the mother-infant dual unity.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation

“four subphases of what we term, overall, the separation-individuation process: differentiation from the mother, practicing of motor skills, rapprochement with the mother, and movement toward object constancy.”
― Margaret S. Mahler, The Psychological Birth Of The Human Infant Symbiosis And Individuation