Customer Reviews

The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation

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This is a very important book to the professional who works with people of all ages. It focuses on what the child needs in the way of early attachment for the infant-toddler to feel secure and emotionally alive via the living relationship with the caretaker. If/when the attachment is not good enough to match the infants specific needs, then we can see the possible problems that can flow form this early deficit in attachment and follows into other forms of emotional issues. I would change the title of this book to include the importance of attachment as the necessary ingrediant facilitating the process of Individuation of the infant. This attachment is related to the bi-directional emotional cues between mother and infant (and father too) and the caretaker's responses.

the first few chapters (120 pages)very technical and difficult for layman to read. However,if you take your time you will learn a lot. The case histories,however are easy to read and excellent-they teach you almost everything you need to know about infant and toddler psychology.

Just like the mother-infant bond makes an indelible impression on the infant, this book's observations gives lasting insight into developmental psychology. Once you dredge through the early chapters' technical and academic expostions, you will learn alot from the individual cases. I plan to revisit this work as I continually encounter children in my practice.

This book provides a fascinating look of the psychological development of the self in the first year of life. It uses a lot of psychoanalytic terms that I was not familiar with, but you can get the main idea. It's a great read for anyone who works with young children, teens, or adults, and deals with attachment issues.

If more new parents and/or future parents would read and understand the theories in this incredible book, there would be far less diagnoses of autism, bi-polar disorder and childhood depression in America. This book is invaluable if you want to raise a health, happy child.

By observing children epigenetically through their development, Mahler and her colleagues illustrate the Separation-Individuation theory of child development. Separation is characterized as the child's emanation from a symbiotic fusion with the mother. Individuation constitutes those consummations leading to the child's cognizance of his distinctive attributes.

The four developmental sub-phases are differentiation, practicing, rapprochement, and the beginnings of emotional object constancy. Differentiation is characterized by the child's perception of his mother as an extension of himself. The second subphase constitutes "body differentiation" from the mother; the formation of a distinct bond with her; and the augmentation of the "autonomous ego apparatuses," contiguous with the mother. During the rapprochement subphase heightened awareness of physical distinctness accompanied by cognitive growth frequently results in increased separation anxiety. In the fourth subphase incisive individuality and some object constancy is accomplished.

The five case studies presented provide the reader with an understanding of the interplay between the physical, mental and emotional progression of the child, and the role mothering plays in the four subphases. I highly recommend this book to those interested in child development and psychodynamic theory.

This includes the original study of Margaret S. Mahler for which she is most famous. Absolutely necessary for researching her Separation Individuation Theory.

This classic book, written in 1975, laid the cornerstone for child psychology. Perhaps even more importantly, it formed a major impulse towards the recognition that early childhood events can profoundly shape a human's adult personality, worldview, and behavior. Margaret Mahler decided to extend her psychological practice to the observations of normal infants and their mothers in the first 3 years of life by establishing a nursery-laboratory, in which mothers could gather with their babies and nurse them, care for them and watch them play as if they were at home. Meanwhile, trained observers watched the children and recorded their behavior, and played with the older infants while their mothers were present or sometimes absent. The parents were also interviewed repeatedly to get a sense of life at home. This detailed record of many children, their parents and home environment, as well as the children's behavior, allowed Mahler and her team to make correlations between the overall environment as experienced by the children and the children's behavior and development of personality structure.

One major discovery detailed in the book is how each infant progresses through 4 clearly discernible developmental stages in a precise sequence: Differentiation and development of Body Image, Practicing, Rapprochement, and Consolidation of Individuality and Object Constancy. Thirty-five years after this book first came out, we now know from depth psychology how disruptions during any of these phases can manifest in daily adult behavior, underscoring the importance of understanding how these disruptions happen and what their precise outcomes are.

The book clearly shows how particularly the mother's behavior has a strong influence on the developing infant, with more or less favorable outcome for the child's personality and happiness. However, the team fully admits that some the children of some apparently ideal mothers did not do well, while other children weathered apparently fussy, anxious, aggressive or neglecting mothers quite well. Still, some central themes are presented in the book, and the reader is left with a clear impression of the impact of the early holding environment on the psychological development of the infant. The notion that early events can imprint infants and profoundly influence their adult behavior, is ridiculed by some. Indeed, like anything, the knowledge of developmental psychology can be abused, for example to justify undesirable adult; however when applied properly, its understanding can form a firm foundation for understanding of many kinds of personal difficulties. With a proper diagnosis, opportunities for healing increase; for this we owe Mahler and her team gratitude and appreciation.

This is a classic, well worth reading and re-reading. It is a reflection of powerful insights.

I saw the videoversion of this book and translate it in to Russian language for my work. I'm impressed by language of discussing. It's very clever and needed book for every young and not very young mother. I'd like to have this book but I live in Russia and I have no idea how I can do it.