Baby Experience Research Articles

Separating from mother and saying goodbye to the infant observer

ABSTRACTThis paper explores ending an infant observation and considers how we should end two-year infant observations? The authors use extracts from a two-year observation and trace the baby's experiences of separations from birth until the final observation, situating them in the context of the internal and external resources available to help the baby manage the pain associated with loss. Observation material shows how the baby's capacity to play enabled her symbolically to communicate her feelings about the observer's departure and how an otherwise supportive and containing environment seemed to struggle to assist the baby in ‘saying goodbye' during the final observations. Studies on mothers' experiences of ending infant observations are considered in the context of the practice of psychoanalytic infant observation and the idea that the observer is often a positive and reliable figure for the baby and as part of the weekly routine. The paper suggests that planning how to end a two-year infant observation should relate to the child’s internal world and external containment, and that separation and ending the observation can be traumatic in some circumstances.

A Unique Child: Child Development - Being ‘me’

Nursery WorldVol. 2014, No. 4 FeatureA Unique Child: Child Development - Being ‘me’Maria RobinsonMaria RobinsonSearch for more papers by this authorMaria RobinsonPublished Online:12 Jun 2014https://doi.org/10.12968/nuwa.2014.7.4.1143282AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleAbstractSelf-awareness is not something we are born with, but an understanding that grows over time. Crucially, says Maria Robinson, it relies on a baby's experience of interacting with others FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails 1 April 2014Volume 2014Issue 4ISSN (print): 0029-6422ISSN (online): 2059-9358 Metrics History Published online 12 June 2014 Published in print 1 April 2014 Information© MA Education Ltd

The impact of observation on the evolution of a relationship between an at-risk mother and infant

This study examines the effects of a year long at-home observation of an at-risk mother-infant dyad by looking at their experiences of each other. While traditionally observers refrain from participation and intervention, I discovered that adopting a more interventionist approach to this at-risk pair was needed to support their development. Daily vignettes demonstrate gradual growth in the mutual regulation and well-attuned development of this dyad. Close observation over many months led the mother to recognise her baby's intentions accurately, points of view, and mental states that lay behind her behaviours. The baby's experience of her mother as empathic and soothing was a major transformation from her experiences in the first weeks of life when the mother felt she did not like children and was unable to regulate and soothe her infant.

Discovering faces in infancy

A human infant can tell apart faces from non-faces when just a few weeks old, and possibly even sooner. This poses the question of how this ability arises. A prominent idea that attempts to account for the very early onset of this skill is that of an innately specified rudimentary face ‘template’ that predisposes infants to look at faces. The counterpoint to this proposal, a purely experiential account of early face preferences, has not been adequately tested. Is it possible that an infant's early visual input might be sufficient to permit rapid acquisition of a basic face concept? We address this question by testing the computational feasibility of learning a face-concept from inputs that correspond to a newborn's visual experience. We commenced this research when one of us (PS) became a father recently. Using a headband-mounted miniature camera (with optics modified to approximately mimic the infant's reduced acuity), we were able to record video-clips from the baby's point of view. They revealed some interesting aspects of the baby's visual experience with regard to faces. Given that the newborn is held by the parents much of the time while awake, faces end up being the most prevalent object in the inputs. Faces are also the most salient by virtue of their ability to move and produce sound; they have few competitors since the baby spends the majority of the first few weeks indoors, in an environment where people are the primary animate entities. Furthermore, the infant's poor acuity significantly degrades images of objects beyond a few feet, adding to the close-up faces' salience. We find that these aspects of the baby's experience make it feasible for an unsupervised learning system to rapidly acquire a rudimentary face concept, even without any innately specified face-templates.

Social trauma: The pathogenic effects of untoward social conditions*

Psychoanalysis has traditionally overlooked the fact that unsuitable and damaging life conditions, originating in the social milieu, play a part in the pathogenesis of emotional suffering and mental disorders. Nonetheless, the self establishes an object relation with the social system, as well as with the non-human environment. This is expected to act as a container–contained relationship. Whenever the community and its institutions fail to act as a container for individuals and groups, this generates a trauma, which can be compared with the baby's experience of a failure in mothering. Such failures can be classified in several categories. The first is when the social system fails to contain, nurture, care for, and protect individuals, as in the case of the lack of assistance and compassion towards the victims of poverty, disease, natural catastrophe, social turmoil, economic crisis, violence, or war. The second category occurs when there is a blatant attack, on the part of the authorities or privileged social groups, on minorities, or even on the bulk of the population, as in the case of social repression, war—both internal and external—racism, genocide, or persecution. The third is when there is a perversion of the social system, which feigns to uphold current social values and laws while actually breaking them, as in the case of corruption, chicanery, and mendacity on the part of the authorities. One recent example of this is the impeachment process against the Chief of Government of Mexico City. The author approaches this problem by exploring the consequences of such experiences for the development and functioning of personality structure and personal relations, as well as their repercussions for individuals living together in the community and for the necessary relation between them and the authorities.

Ending breastfeeding: How does psychodynamic thinking inform breastfeeding services in helping women wean their babies from the breast?

This paper considers the ideas of the major contributors to psychoanalytical theory on weaning. Melanie Klein's paper on weaning is examined in detail. Cultural and anthropological factors are also discussed. Exploration of health literature shows very little consideration of the actual experiences of being weaned from the breast. Psychoanalytical theory emphasizes the baby's experience at the breast and subsequent loss of the breast – the first ‘object’ to which the infant relates. An observation of a single mother and her infant boy in attendance at a breastfeeding support group is used to illustrate the theoretical ideas outlined. The absence of the father was a highly significant factor in the weaning difficulties encountered by this pair. The staff of the breastfeeding group seemed to find feelings of loss around weaning from breastfeeding difficult to tolerate. More thought could be given by health workers to how parents are supported in weaning their infants from the breast (or substitute) and introduced to new food. There is potential for workers who advise parents on weaning issues being helped to understand theoretical ideas and to receive appropriate supervision in their work to enable more effective and early promotion of mental wellbeing for parents and infants.

Primitive anxieties which interfere with attachment

This paper examines a detailed description of a clinical intervention with a baby and his family in order to explore some of the primitive anxieties that may interfere with attachment. Conceptual bridges between British Object Relations Theory and Attachment Theory are identified. The clinical material is used to show how internal and external factors mutually influence each other to contribute to the baby's experience of himself in relation to his family. The therapist's countertransference is studied as a guide to understanding the nature of the primitive anxieties that have interfered with the baby's development.

In the footsteps of Frances Tustin: Further reflections on the construction of the body‐ego1

The author cites material from infant observation and from work with children with autism which illustrates primitive processes of identification and their relation to the development of the body image. The sense of a skin which reliably contains the child's body is seen as being built up through the combination of eye contact with the mother, as a mediator of emotional containment, and tactile reinforcement of the child's sense of having a backbone. The author proposes the term ‘lateral object of primary identification’ to describe the baby's experience of his mother and himself each occupying half of his body. She describes the process by means of which the dual link with the mother — tactile and visual — is progressively inscribed in the major joints of the body, from the neck downwards, in the course of normal development. In this way, separation can be experienced as a loss of part of the body. The experience of losing part of the mouth, as described by Tustin, is discussed with reference to theories of containment (Bion) and projection (Green).

Before and Beyond Projection? A Discussion of the Therapist's Experience of Holding the Patient in Mind

ABSTRACT. This paper is an attempt to think about a process and experience which is essentially before thinking in its origins; that is to say, the maternal experience of holding the baby in mind and the baby's experience of being held. I have looked at the issue subjectively and anecdotally, for which in the end I make no apology as I can see no other way to proceed, at least in the first instance; and I want to think about how this thinking applies to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.