Abstract
The severe difficulties experienced by a mother and infant in establishing a satisfactory feeding relationship, resulting in the infant's failure to thrive, are described. The interaction between the infant's physical complaints, mother's resulting anxious projections, and her difficulties at containing the baby's own primitive anxieties is considered and discussed in terms of the significance of closeness and distance between mother and baby during feeding. The baby's determined efforts at taking control over his feeding environment increased over time, especially through the manipulation of the physical objects involved in feeding, leading to a gradual improvement in the feeding relationship. This process is examined in terms of Winnicott's ideas on transitional phenomena and transitional objects.
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