LATER ORT THEORIES

• Psychological birth


  The child becomes an individual separate from his or her primary caregiver, an accomplishment that leads ultimately to a sense of identity
• Normal Autism (3-4 weeks old)


  1. Newborn infant satisfies various needs within the all-powerful protective orbit of a mother's care

  2. Neonates have a sense of omnipotence, because their needs are cared for automatically and without their having to expend any effort

  3. Infant naturally searches for the mother's breast
• Normal Symbiosis (4-5 weeks old)


  1. Infant behaves and functions as though he and his mother were an omnipotent system—a dual unity within one common boundary

  2. Infant can recognize the mother's face and can perceive her pleasure or distress
• Separation-individuation (5-36 months old)


  1. Children become psychologically separated from their mothers, achieve a sense of individuation, and begin to develop feelings of personal identity

  2. Young children experience the external world as being more dangerous than it was during the first two stages
• Substages of Separation-individuation

  • Differentiation (5-10 months) - marked by a bodily breaking away from the mother-infant symbiotic orbit
  • Practicing (7-16 months) - children easily distinguish their body from their mother's, establish a specific bond with their mother, and begin to develop an autonomous ego
  • Rapprochement (16 to 25 months) - they desire to bring their mother and themselves back together, both physically and psychologically
  • Libidinal Object Constancy - children must develop a constant inner representation of their mother so that they can tolerate being physically separate from her
• Any errors made during the First 3 years - the time of psychological birth - may result in later regressions to a stage when a person had not yet achieved separation from the mother and thus a sense of personal identity
• HEINZ KOHUT emphasized the process by which the self evolves from a vague and undifferentiated image to a clear and precise sense of individual identity
• Infants require adult caregivers

  Not only to gratify physical needs but also to satisfy basic psychological needs
• Self-objects


  Adults who treat infants as if they had a sense of self
• The self


  The child's focus of interpersonal relations, shaping how he or she will relate to parents and other self-objects
• Narcissistic needs


  • The need to exhibit the grandiose self
  • The need to acquire an idealized image of one or both parents
• Grandiose-exhibitionistic self


  Established when the infant relates to a "mirroring" self-object who reflects approval of its behavior
• Both narcissistic self-images are necessary for healthy personality development. Both, however, must change as the child grows older. If they remain unaltered, they result in a pathologically narcissistic adult personality.
• Bowlby firmly believed that the attachments formed during childhood have an important impact on adulthood. Because childhood attachments are crucial to later development, Bowlby argued that investigators should study childhood directly and not rely on distorted retrospective accounts from adults.
• Protest stage (Separation Anxiety)


  When their caregiver is first out of sight, infants will cry, resist soothing by other people, and search for their caregiver
• Despair (Separation Anxiety)


  As separation continues, infants become quiet, sad, passive, listless, and apathetic
• Detachment (Separation Anxiety)


  Infants become emotionally detached from other people, including their caregiver
• 
  

  First, a responsive and accessible caregiver (usually the mother) must

  create a secure base for the child. The infant needs to know that the

  caregiver is accessible and dependable. If this dependability is

  present, the child is better able to develop confidence and security in

  exploring the world.
• 
  

  A second assumption of attachment theory is that a bonding

  relationship (or lack thereof ) becomes internalized and serves as a

  mental working model on which future friendships and love

  relationships are built.
• Attachment styles

  • Secure attachment - infants are happy and enthusiastic and initiate contact when their mother returns
  • Anxious-resistant attachment - infants are ambivalent, become unusually upset when their mother leaves, and reject attempts at being soothed when she returns
  • Anxious-avoidant - infants stay calm when their mother leaves, accept the stranger, and ignore and avoid their mother when she returns
• To Mahler, an individual’s psychological birth begins during the first weeks of postnatal life and continues for the next 3 years or so.
• Mary Ainsworth experiment is strange situation