Bringing Up Baby

The Psychoanalytic Infant Comes of Age

Dianna T. Kenny

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781780490434
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429911613
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuropsychology
• Index: Psychology

This is an important text that synthesises diverse literatures and theories on infant development into a coherent framework that illuminates the essence of infancy for all those who have infants, study infants, teach about infancy, make policy with respect to infant welfare, and work medically or therapeutically with mothers and their infants. It brings together in one volume the principal theories of infant development, beginning with Freud's vision of the Oedipal infant, moving through the post-Freudian conceptualizations of the infant of Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and the British Independents with Donald Winnicott as exemplar, then to the attachment theorists, the intersubjective theories, the cognitive developmental psychologists, examining the work of Jean Piaget and the neo-Piagetian cognitive theorists concluding with the modern infant of developmental neuroscience and an examination of the neurobiology of attachment, stress, and care giving.

Chapter One

Psychoanalysis and infancy: a historical and theoretical overview

The two central constructs of this book—infancy and psychoanalysis—are both rich in imagery and allusion. Discourses around these constructs are powerful; both are so much a part of our everyday lexicon that their meanings are taken for granted. However, although pervasive, they remain elusive. In order to truly understand them it is necessary to deconstruct these concepts and find their core. This is no easy matter. Heisenberg (1958) reminds us that even “natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning” (p. 5). Similarly, Gadamer (1975), in Truth and Method, argues that we are embedded in a historically conditioned set of prejudices enshrined in culture, which constitute pre-formed understandings that organise our subjective experience. Nietzsche expressed a similar, although more pessimistic view, since he concludes that truth is an illusion:

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins that have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. (Nietzsche, 1870, in Breazeale, 1979, pp. 46–47)

If one has a view that scientific development is possible, Nietzsche’s position is untenable. We can, however, use as our starting point for scientific investigation Gadamer’s proposition that truth is obscured by conditioning, but can be accessed via careful methodologies. We must, therefore, be mindful that constructs like psychoanalysis and infancy have been shaped not only by our method of questioning, but also by powerful cultural, social, political, and economic forces, pre-formed understandings or biases of which we are hardly aware. Both constructs have undergone significant modification over time in response to their changing ecologies, to research and development in each field, and in the cross-fertilisation between the two fields.

This book is an exploration of the changing constructions of infancy and psychoanalysis viewed through multiple theoretical lenses over time. In recent history, psychoanalytic conceptualisations of infancy have been influential, indeed dominant, and have permeated all subsequent theories of infant development and, by extension, child-rearing practices and the practice of psychotherapy. Much of this book is, therefore, about psychoanalytic theory as it reflects on conceptions of infancy and the post-psychoanalytic infant as informed by post-classical psychoanalytic theory, ethology, and attachment theory, and the cognitive and neurosciences. We begin with a brief overview of the concept of infancy through history.

The infant in history

“We have evolved to be born as a human being who will, with a very high probability, very early attempt and succeed in becoming a person” (Tomkins, 1978, p. 215).

There is no part of the human lifespan more intriguing than infancy. The human infant is unique among mammalian and primate species because human infants are born very immature and remain so for the longest period of any species. Infancy is simultaneously a period of helplessness and a time of rapid growth and development. In the first year, the brain doubles in volume, reaching 60% of its final adult size (Bogin, 1999). Importantly, it is a time during which infants can only communicate indirectly, that is, non-verbally (the word “infant” is derived from the Latin, infans, meaning speechless, inarticulate, new born, childish, foolish), thereby requiring care-givers and scientists to infer their nature, capacities, physical needs, and emotional states. Such situations are ripe for the activation of the imagination, particularly the psychoanalytic imagination, as we shall see in the coming chapters.

In the 1960s, the physical anthropologist, Michael Konner (2010), made systematic ethological observations of mother–infant interactions in the !Kung San, a primitive tribe of hunter-gatherers in Botswana, in order to better understand the evolutionary unfolding of the human species. He was particularly interested in human childhood, since it differs in significant ways from other mammalian and primate species. For example, the prolonged dependency of human infants promotes the development of social behaviour, pair bonding, and family groupings, as well as brain and behavioural development that extends over a greater proportion of the lifespan compared with other primates. Konner argued that these long, protected childhoods provide extended opportunities for play through which cognitive, social, behavioural, and motor skills develop. Humans’ upright bipedal locomotion also conferred significant advantages over their evolutionary predecessors—human hands became skilled instruments and instrument makers. Superior adaptability and flexibility are other unique features of human evolution that promote survival in diverse environments. Although Konner focused on behavioural and cultural “universals” across ethnic groups, the development of cultural specifics, including different child-rearing practices, have also had profound effects on child development throughout history.

Child rearing practices are measured against society’s success in developing characteristics and behaviours considered consistent and acceptable to prevailing social norms. In medieval times, children were regarded as adults as soon as they could walk and talk (Barrington, 2004). This view of children meant that they were expected to behave, work, dress, and think like adults. Children’s behaviour was, therefore, judged according to mature adult standards, and childish deviations, such as bedwetting, were the subject of harsh physical punishment. Children from the poorer classes took their places alongside adults in the workforce, with some children being sent to work in mines and factories as soon as they could perform any useful, menial task (Orme, 2003).

Contrary to popular belief, children from the poorer classes were not alone in being subjected to what we would today characterise as child abuse. In his psycho-history on childhood in seventeenth-century France, Hunt (1970) applied Erikson’s (1980a) developmental stage theory to assess the quality of parenting at this time and place in history. Hunt was appalled by what he discovered: children were subjected to all manner of brutalities that included starvation and tight binding in swaddling clothes as infants, whippings, and administration of enemas during toddlerhood to “break the child’s will”, sexual abuse for the amusement of courtiers in the kings’ courts, and abandonment. Accounts derived from the detailed diaries of Louis XIII’s paediatrician describe the terrifying nightmares experienced by the young Dauphin in response to his daily morning whippings. Similarly, Hunt details the callous abuse of young boys as sexual objects and presents eye-witness accounts of their terrified, uncontrollable shaking. Hunt speculates on the connection between these modes of child rearing and adult personality and behaviour, a connection with which this book will be centrally concerned, although it was beyond the scope of Hunt’s project to provide a detailed argument.

Social, economic, and political conditions through the ages have exerted significant impacts on maternal behaviour, often overriding powerful maternal biologically-based nurturing and attachment behaviours. Indeed, “[h]uman mothers have been known to abandon children, sell them, foster them, give them to the church as oblates, drown them, strangle them, even eat them . . .” (Hrdy, 1999, pp. 41–42). Even in current times, we have witnessed with horror as widespread female infanticide became an unexpected consequence of the one child policy in China.

Wet nursing (i.e., the practice of breastfeeding another woman’s infant) was a prominent feature of child-rearing throughout European history, peaking in the late eighteenth century. It was thought to have originated in ancient Ur and Egypt, and was mostly practised by the wealthier classes. There are records from the second century AD that indicate that wet nursing was a widespread commercial enterprise, although servants and slaves were also required to wet nurse their mistresses’ babies as part of their duties. In times of famine, poverty-stricken women would abandon their own children in foundling homes and wet nurse other infants for pay as a means of survival. This practice was widespread in late Czarist Russia and elsewhere (Konner, 2010). Boswell (1988) traced the history of foundling homes in Europe from antiquity to the Renaissance, and concluded that parents either sold their children or abandoned them in foundling homes to save them from death by starvation or infection. Boswell concluded, quoting the fourth century saint, St Basil of Caesarea, that parents were engaged in a “struggle between the desperation of hunger and the bonds of parenthood . . . [parents] are conquered by necessity and inexorable need . . . After a thousand tears [the father] comes to sell a beloved child” (pp. 165–166). Hunt (1970) also described mothers who found child-rearing unrewarding, giving their children over to the care of wet nurses, not because of poverty, hunger, or homelessness, but because they did not feel inclined to care for their own infants. Fathers supported their wives in this practice because they wanted no rivals for their wives’ attention. Further, breastfed infants were thought to drain the mothers’ life-blood and were characterised as “devouring serpents”.

Child-rearing practices at the turn of the twentieth century continued to emphasise the need for firm control of the child, beginning from birth. Rigid schedules for feeding, toilet training, play, and socialisation, accompanied by strict disciplinary practices, often including harsh physical punishment (Grogan-Kaylor & Otis, 2007) have finally given way in recent times to a much more relaxed view of “good” parenting that is underpinned by the view that children should be permitted to self-regulate and encouraged in self-exploration and self-expression. Harsh disciplinary practices and authoritarian parenting are now discouraged in favour of more authoritative parenting and flexible limit setting (Simons & Conger, 2007).

Medieval Europe relied on both children and the aged to contribute to the workforce, and, hence, both groups were integral to the social fabric (Rahikainen, 2004). In modern western society, neither children nor the aged are members of the labour force, so the relative value of these life stages cannot be measured in economic terms. In affluent cultures, economic prosperity permits us to take a more humane, indulgent, and responsible attitude towards our more dependent members. Children are seen as an investment in the country’s future and the elderly as deserving reward for their contribution to their country’s economic growth. However, in cultures such as the Ik of Uganda, who are fighting for the survival of their tribe, the adult members are cruel and neglectful of both their young and aged, viewing both groups as expendable burdens. Only those children who can fend for themselves and who do not constitute a drain on limited tribal resources survive to adulthood. The infirm elderly are not fed and are left to die (Darkwa & Mazibuko, 2002; Hartley, Ojwang, Baguwemu, Ddamulira, & Chavuta, 2005; Witter, 2004).

Situating infancy within a lifespan development perspective

Developmental psychology is the study of how people develop and change throughout the lifespan, beginning at conception and ending in death. Development is a lifelong process and significant change can occur at any time. Most people experience common transitional events called rites of passage (Thomson et al., 2002) that are determined by the cultures in which they grow up. In western culture, commencing and finishing school and entering and retiring from the workforce are examples of traditional rites of passage that shape our lives.

To make the study of human development more manageable, developmental researchers investigate its various components separately for each life stage (Richter, 2006; Street, 2007). One way that developmental psychologists categorise the various stages of the life cycle is presented in Table 1.

Age as a criterion of development assumes greater or lesser importance at different stages of the lifespan. You will notice that the age bands for each life stage are narrow in the early part of life, increase between young adulthood and middle age, and narrow again toward the end of the lifespan. The differences reflect the different rates at which people change over the lifespan. For example, the changes in the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development between one and two years of age are greater than those between seven and eight years of age, which are in turn greater than those between twenty-five and twenty-six years of age.

Table 1. Stages in the human lifespan and associated chronological ages.

Psychoanalytic definitions of development and life stages

Early psychoanalytic theory offers fewer stages, with wider age groups (e.g., infancy (years 0–3), early childhood (years 3–6), latency (years 6–12), adolescence (years 12–18), and adulthood) (Moore & Fine, 1990b)). Because we are concerned in this book with psychoanalytic theories of development, the term “infancy” will denote that part of the lifespan between birth and five years of age, consistent with current psychoanalytic usage (Tuckett & Levinson, 2010). The early years of development represent an intense growth period during which children develop in overlapping “stages”. Because there is considerable developmental variation among young children, I wanted to avoid being too prescriptive with respect to age and stage in order to convey the essentially organic unfolding of development over a more extended time frame in the early part of the lifespan.

Different psychoanalytic theories offer differing, but not necessarily incompatible, definitions of development. As with mainstream developmental theories (e.g., Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development—see Chapter Five), most of the early psychoanalytic theories subscribed to stage or phase theories of development, assuming that there is a predictable, sequential progression in the developmental process. Perhaps the best known psychoanalytic developmental stage theory is Freud’s (1905d) psychosexual stage theory that will be discussed in Chapter Two. In his later work (e.g., Freud, 1940a[1938]), Freud questioned the concept of stages, recognising that development might not be linear and that overlap between stages was the rule rather than the exception. With the advent of object relations theory, definitions of development changed to account for processes related to psychosocial (rather than psychosexual) development. Melanie Klein’s conceptualisation represented a transitional view that included both psychosexual stages and the development of object relations. In her model, psychological development proceeded along six trajectories: (i) physiological maturation; (ii) phases of the libido; (iii) the reality principle; (iv) development of object-relations; (v) development of the ego; and (vi) the sequence of anxiety-situations (see Chapter Three) (Hinshelwood, 1991; Tyson & Tyson, 1999). Other examples of psychoanalytic models of development include Spitz’s indicators and organisers, Anna Freud’s developmental lines (see Chapter Three), Mahler’s stages in the separation–individuation process (see Chapter Four), and Daniel Stern’s (1985, 1994, 1995) interpersonal theory of self development (see Chapter Four).

In more recent psychoanalytic scholarship, the concept of stage theories has been softened and replaced with more process-orientated theories such as those proposed by Beebe and colleagues (see Chapter Four). Demos (2008) has called for a more integrated approach to defining development from a psychoanalytic perspective that incorporates advances in our knowledge from other disciplines such as developmental psychology, non-linear system theory, affect theory, and neuroscience. Below is a psychoanalytic definition of development that recognises the importance of both biological and environmental factors and the continuity of developmental unfolding while retaining the structuralist concepts of early Freudian theorising.

[Development is a]n ongoing process in which the psychic structures and functions determining the human personality gradually evolve from the experiences of a biologically maturing individual in interaction with his or her environment. Such interaction involves genetically determined maturational sequences and inherent potentialities, environmental influences, and personal experiences. In psychoanalytic usage the term is applied specifically to those growth processes directly dependent on interaction with the environment and through which the major psychic structures (id, ego, and superego) form. Maturation refers to physical and psychic growth related to the inherent genetic potential and largely independent of external factors. This distinction has become less clear, however, with recognition that environmental interaction plays a role in both maturation and development. (Moore & Fine, 1990a, p. 395)

While calling for a more integrated definition of infancy and development, the excerpt below also admonishes that the psychoanalytic perspective still has much to offer a scientific definition and that the neglect or abandonment of the unique insights offered by psychoanalytic theory will impoverish our understanding of human development.

The metaphorical “baby” of psychoanalytic theory which stands for “the past” will probably have to be abandoned and replaced by more appropriate neuropsychologically informed notions consistent with what we now understand about the development of the central nervous system. Yet a unique advantage of the psychoanalytic model over neuropsychoanalytic-based developmental views is its vision of development as a series of compromise formations. Both unconscious and conscious representations of the self are helpfully viewed as the product of competing environmental pressures and intrapsychic processes in an effort to regulate positive and negative affect. These compromises may have involved defensive distortion of mental representations; where the competing pressures have occurred particularly early or intensely, wholesale distortion or disabling of some of the mental processes which generate representations may also have occurred, leading to far more pervasive and extensive abnormalities of development. (Rubinstein, 1997)

The collective psychoanalytic imagination has contributed an impressive set of metaphors with which to begin our task of u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter One Psychoanalysis and infancy: a historical and theoretical overview
• Chapter Two Freud’s theory of infant sexuality
• Chapter Three The infant of the child psychoanalysts
• Chapter Four The attached infant: the psychoanalytic legacy
• Chapter Five The cognitive infant
• Chapter Six The modern infant: enter developmental neuroscience
• References
• Index