Young Children and their Parents

Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Infant Observation

Gertraud Diem-Wille

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367329983
• eBook ISBN: 9780429924385
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book focuses on the intertwining between the development of a child's psyche and its parents' behaviour. It shows the importance of the earliest period of childhood for the development of basic emotional patterns of the personality.

CHAPTER ONE


Understanding psychological development

Theoretical basis of a psychoanalytical interpretation of human development

Our main theme is the development of the psyche and the young child’s emotional, symbolic, and linguistic skills in his relationship with the relevant persons surrounding him within our Western culture.

The child’s development will be illustrated using narrations, descriptions, and case studies, the key to this approach being a direct focus on actual children. Narratives supplied by adults, above all the parents of some of the children described, can supplement regularly repeated observation. This approach of attempting to understand human development through observation, description, and the analysis of what is observed contrasts with the behaviourist method. Although the latter focuses on behaviour, it is not the child’s behaviour but rather the behaviour of animals in an experimental situation that is chosen as the reference system. Thus in textbooks on developmental psychology, the chapter on birth and early development will sometimes contain a description of the behaviour of primates in caring for their young.

If we consider the psychological importance of the relationship between parents and baby, the varied and complex relationships between the parents’ psyches, ideas, and internal images on the one hand and the developmental conditions for the new living being on the other become evident. If we wish to understand the psychological development of the child’s personality, it is necessary to focus our attention on the relationship between parents and child. This attaches crucial importance both to the real world and to inner reality.

Where I speak of inner reality, I mean the psychological reality that is expressed in the images and concepts of the parents about themselves and about the baby. There are two parallel worlds, that of the real baby–parent interaction and that of the parents’ ideas about the baby and themselves as parents. These two worlds can be in harmony or at odds—either slightly or radically—with each other. There is the real baby in the mother’s or father’s arms, and at the same time there is the image of the baby, “the imaginary baby”, in the mother’s experience. There is also the real mother who holds the baby, and at the same time the inner image she has of herself as a mother. These inner images influence the baby’s development dramatically, both positively and negatively. The relationship between mother and baby is, however, also always influenced by the relationship between the mother and the baby’s father, with the result that the relationships between three persons are always of essential importance (cf. Green, 1993). Hence I view the existence of “inner images”, also known as “representations”, as a necessary and important part of a relationship. However, the quality of the relationship can vary, encouraging or restricting a child’s development. These inner images the parents make of their baby necessarily differ from the image formed by a neutral observer,¹ since the parents include within them their hopes and fears, their memories of other family members, and aspects of their self-image. It is equally important to describe how the “inner world” of a baby develops. At the outset, I would only like to say here that it is not sufficient to describe the external reality; it is also necessary to observe how the baby’s psyche develops. Here, I assume that the baby internalises, as a kind of model, the manner in which he experiences the world through his mother or other relevant reference persons, making this the starting point of his image of himself and of the world, an image then modified and adjusted through the baby’s feelings and fantasies.

Seeing one’s own child as the cutest and sweetest of children—transformed through the eyes of love—is part of “normal” parenting. The perception of the real baby is influenced by this inner image, as well as by the feelings, hopes, or emotions at any particular time. A restless screaming baby that co-opts his parents’ attention up to the limits of their physical and psychological capacities may temporarily seem ugly and repulsive to those frustrated, bleary-eyed parents at the end of their tether. Only a short time later, the same baby—satisfied, happy, and sleeping peacefully—will seem to them a little angel for whom they have only the tenderest feelings.

From the way parents describe their feelings about their child, it becomes clear that there is simultaneously love and hate, sacrificial devotion and distance, helplessness and aggression, joy and desperation. Freud’s great contribution was to show that human relationships are always marked by ambivalence, that is, by different qualities of feelings that affect us at the same time and that can rapidly shift. The closer a relationship is, the more violent the contrast can be. Someone who very much loves another hopes for the same intense feelings in return, and for this reason is hurt and offended by rejection, indifference, or even simply different wishes. The aim of the psychoanalytical approach is to understand these complicated interactions, to identify the hidden meanings behind apparently logical contradictions and incompatibilities, and to reveal this to the persons involved. When I here go into detail concerning the variety of relationships between parents and child, I should point out that it is a question of understanding and not of prescriptive standards, rules of conduct, or the allocation of blame. Often, analyses of a relationship have been misunderstood as accusations or as placing blame on the mothers and fathers—as if it would ever be possible to bring up a child without conflict or misunderstandings. It is not my aim here to establish rules for a good or “correct” upbringing, but instead to show the broad range within which an upbringing is “good enough” to encourage the child’s development.² The aim is to encourage an attitude of openness and observation that allows the relationship between the baby and his parents to be understood. The knowledge that there is no mother or father who “can throw off their past”, that they are themselves the product of their own life history, should help readers to adopt a tolerant and understanding attitude towards themselves. The reader may ask whether his or her experiences and upbringing practices fall outside the framework of “normality”. In order to show how broad and varied relationship patterns are between parents and children, I shall describe two families in more detail, and use these empirical case studies to hypothesise about the families’ relationship patterns and emotional structures. The fact that “normality” is put in inverted commas should indicate that there is no clear border between the normal and the abnormal, between healthy and pathological. The phenomena obviously manifested in problem families also are partially at work in “normally neurotic” persons.

I should like to point out another aspect that might be misunderstood: the hope of being presented with a generally applicable description of a family. Particularly in the close relationship between children and parents, the observer’s perspective plays a major role. Description and assessment of feelings, offences, joys, and experiences depend on who is providing the description: six children could see the same mother differently, as either strict or encouraging, loving, indulgent, cold, or out of control. The description is always the result of the relationship between the person providing it and the object of the description. The same applies in reverse—when, for example, the same mother is asked to describe her relationship with the six children and the atmosphere within her family. These points of view necessarily differ, since they are always influenced by imagination, wishes, hopes, and underlying emotional states. The same person would also assess the relationship with his or her father or mother differently depending on the situation or their age; a father who was critically rejected by his adolescent daughter might be regarded by the adult daughter later as considerably more loving and tolerant.

In order to establish a balance between understanding the development of an individual’s personality and the various theoretical concepts, we shall begin by presenting children between the ages of three and four, then describing—as far as empirical data permits—their path through life from birth up to the period of observation.

Perspectives of psychoanalytical infant observation

How is it in principle possible to make statements about the psychological development of young children? With adults, Freud discovered that he could analyse dreams and make use of free association in order to draw conclusions about subconscious wishes, inhibitions, and defence mechanisms of the psyche, the “psychological apparatus”. Children express their imagination, inner conflicts, and forms of defence through play, so that understanding children’s play permits access to their inner world. The interaction and physical contact with their parents also expresses the emotional proximity between them, while eye contact and the negotiation of rules and regulations reveals to the observer the quality of the relationship between parents and child.

In order to show the complexity of development in these first few years, I wish to view the earliest stages in hindsight, from the vantage point reached after four years. For psychoanalysis, the main source of data and observations concerning the psychological development of the individual is therapeutic work with patients and children with problems or developmental difficulties. Difficulties and problems make these phenomena far more apparent than in normal relationships. The path towards psychoanalytical discovery moves from the psyche to the body. In the course of research, it has penetrated to the early stages of a child’s development and the initial stages of the psychological differentiation of the physical functions. The “ego is above all something physical” claimed Gaddini (1998), with reference to Freud, and he speaks of a mirror-like image of the body-soul and soul-body continuum, depending on intellectual approach and research methodology. Freud writes of the psychological as ultimately always related to the physical. The psychological situation reveals itself holistically, that is, not only verbal expressions are of importance but also body language. A baby experiencing eating problems is expressing that something is wrong. This may be a physical illness or defect—or, if nothing physical is found, the baby may be showing something about a problem in its relationship with its mother. The use the word “may” indicates that these assumptions are provisional, and it is important to be open to a variety of possibilities. In the case of Max, to be discussed, we will see that his frequent screaming also had a somatic cause: only when he was eighteen months old did doctors accidentally discover a chronically inflamed kidney during a medical examination. However, for Max’s psychological development, what was important was the manner in which his parents were able to deal with his seemingly inexplicable crying.

The distinction between the behaviour of a person significant to the subject or an external event and its emotional importance is of central importance in psychoanalytic interpretation. The emphasis on “psychological reality” has led to the common misunderstanding that it means real events do not play a role—a criticism especially made against Melanie Klein and her group. Instead, it is more of a special point of view from which real events are observed. If, for instance, a man says his young wife is sexually so experienced since she had every form of sexual experience from as early as age thirteen, this would give a psychoanalyst pause. The assumption—perhaps common in everyday awareness—that this woman was particularly interested in sex or had an unproblematic relationship with her body, had no fear of the other sex, was self-assured and reckless, would not be shared by an analyst. Instead, an analyst would ask what the meaning of such promiscuous conduct might be. Did this “orgiastic experience” represent a defence against her fear of closeness? How did she experience group sex herself? Did she enjoy it? Did she feel devalued? Did she look for a type of physical proximity in this kind of bodily contact because she felt lost and alone and had nobody to talk to? Or was this hectic sexual activity a way of distracting herself from threatening inner dangers? Did she act in this way to subconsciously conceal her fear of a mental breakdown? Was there anyone important to her amongst all her sexual partners? Was there a longer relationship that was emotionally important? We would tend to assume that this young woman has difficulties in seeing herself and her body as something valuable, in accepting herself as a person worth loving. The promiscuous activity is probably a cover for fear and uncertainty, often in the very fundamental sense that she does not know who she is. Pausing to reflect would then be very threatening—therefore, she must always be active and be in permanent tension as a result of her hazardous way of life. Where I speak of a lack of prejudice, which might for instance lie behind “free” sexual activity, what I mean is that it is not possible to conclude the underlying reasons from a particular conduct. One might also ask why the older man makes this statement. Is he boasting about his young wife and her potency, or is he showing his uncertainty and fear of not being able to satisfy her demands? This multitude of questions reflects the different possibilities of subconscious conflicts that might lie behind such conduct—conflicts that must be insulated if the subject is not to become aware of them. Interestingly, this interpretation is confirmed by many people who have concluded from experience that a wild sexual indulgence is unsatisfying.

Similarly, in assessing the emotional situation of children and their psychological development, external factors do not offer an unambiguous explanation: a child whose parents divorce early can be in a better emotional condition than a child from an intact marriage, if the father is depressive or if the mother, even if at home, is emotionally inaccessible.

For this reason, psychoanalytic infant observation based on Esther Bick’s method (Bick, 1964; Miller, Rustin, Rustin & Shuttleworth, 1989) entails precise observation and perception of details in interaction and the emotional quality of the relationship. Less important than how long the mother breastfeeds or how long the baby is picked up and carried by the father is their emotional registration of their baby’s feelings. We can attempt to understand the quality of the parents’ attention and the baby’s reaction through precise description. Only the infant’s reaction to contact with his parents, the emotional “dialogue”, can provide us with an indication of the quality of the relationship between parents and infant.

Since these assumptions may be difficult to follow, I should like to cite a number of examples in clarification. These are partial results of a larger study examining the development of children in the first four years of life.³ Four pairs of parents and their children were observed once a week over a period of two years. This psychoanalytic training method is known as “infant observation”. It was developed by Esther Bick, an English psychoanalyst, around 1950 in London and has since become an important element in the training of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. The observer first establishes contact with a couple expecting a baby, in order to obtain permission for observing the baby and his development once a week over a period of two years. The aim is to learn to perceive as accurately as possible everything that concerns the baby within his surroundings, with the observer remaining true to the role of observer but also open to what the parents have to say about their situation with the baby. The observer should exercise no other function within the family, should not give any advice or comments, make any interpretations, or take on any domestic or personal functions. In small seminar groups with a psychoanalyst, the observations, impressions, feelings, and moods of the observer are discussed and hypotheses drawn up about the development of the baby’s personality. Detailed reports on Esther Bick’s mode of infant observation have been published (Bick, 1964; Briggs, 1997; Diem-Wille, Finger & Heintel, 1998; Ermann, 1996; Lazar, Lehmann & Häußinger, 1986; Miller, Rustin, Rustin & Shuttleworth, 1989; Reid, 1997). The International Journal of Infant Observation (1998–2013) discusses a wide variety of questions and results of infant observation. This is not an artificial investigation situation, but takes place within the natural surroundings of the young family.

In the follow-up study, I examined whether the hypotheses about the observed infants corresponded with their further development. To this end, having first read the written work on the observation, I spoke with the observer and we then discussed the observation together with the seminar leader of the infant observation group. It was only at this stage that I contacted the parents of the child observed, by now four years old, and asked for permission to carry out additional observations at home and in the kindergarten. After finishing the observation, I held detailed narrative interviews with each parent separately. In a narrative interview, the interviewee is requested to expound freely and in detail on topics or events from his or her life on the basis of a few open questions. During the interviews, parents told me how they had experienced pregnancy, birth, and the first few years of their child’s development, and what influence the birt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the author
• Preface Margaret Rustin
• Foreword
• Foreword to the second edition
• Introduction
• Chapter One Understanding psychological development
• Chapter Two The first year of life
• Chapter Three The second year of life
• Chapter Four The third year of life
• Chapter Five Outlook and perspectives: mastering early childhood
• References
• Index