Relationships in Development: Infancy, Intersubjectivity, and Attachment

359 Pages·2017·2.44 MB·English

by  Stephen Seligman

Relationships in Development
The recent explosion of new research about infants, parental care, and infant–parent
relationships has shown conclusively that human relationships are central motivators and
organizers in development. Relationships in Development examines the practical impli-
cations for dynamic psychotherapy with both adults and children, especially following
trauma. Stephen Seligman offers engaging examples of infant–parent interactions as well
as of psychotherapeutic process. He traces the place of childhood and child development
in psychoanalysis from Freud onward, showing how different images about babies evolved
and influenced analytic theory and practice.
Relationships in Development offers a new integration of ideas that updates established
psychoanalytic models in a new context: “Relational-developmental psychoanalysis.”
Seligman integrates four crucial domains:
•• Infancy Research, including attachment theory and research
•• Developmental Psychoanalysis
•• Relational/intersubjective Psychoanalysis
•• Classical Freudian, Kleinian, and Object Relations theories (including Winnicott).
An array of specific sources are included: developmental neuroscience, attachment t heory
and research, studies of emotion, trauma and infant–parent interaction, and nonlinear
dynamic systems theories. Although new psychoanalytic approaches are featured, the clas-
sical theories are not neglected, including the Freudian, Kleinian, Winnicottian, and Ego
Psychology orientations. Seligman links current knowledge about early experiences and
how they shape later development with the traditional psychoanalytic attention to the irra-
tional, unconscious, turbulent, and unknowable aspects of the mind and human interaction.
These different fields are taken together to offer an open and flexible approach to psychody-
namic therapy with a variety of patients in different socioeconomic and cultural situations.
Relationships in Development will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psycho-
therapists, and graduate students in psychology, social work, and psychotherapy. The fun-
damental issues and implications presented will also be of great importance to the wider
psychodynamic and psychotherapeutic communities.
Stephen Seligman is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San
Francisco; Joint Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues; Training and Supervising
Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Institute of
Northern California; and Clinical Professor at the New York University Postdoctoral
Program in Psychoanalysis. He is also co-editor of the American Psychiatric Press’ Infant
and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice.
Relational Perspectives Book Series
Lewis Aron & Adrienne Harris
Series Co-Editors
Steven Kuch.uck & Eyal Rozmarin
Associate Editors
The Relational Perspectives Book Series (RPBS) publishes books that grow out of or
contribute to the relational tradition in contemporary psychoanalysis. The term relational
psychoanalysis was first used by Greenberg and Mitchell1 to bridge the traditions of inter-
personal relations, as developed within interpersonal psychoanalysis and object relations,
as developed within contemporary British theory. But, under the seminal work of the late
Stephen A. Mitchell, the term relational psychoanalysis grew and began to accrue to itself
many other influences and developments. Various tributaries—interpersonal psychoanaly-
sis, object relations theory, Self Psychology, empirical infancy research, and elements of
contemporary Freudian and Kleinian thought—flow into this tradition, which understands
relational configurations between self and others, both real and fantasied, as the primary
subject of psychoanalytic investigation.
We refer to the relational tradition, rather than to a relational school, to highlight that
we are identifying a trend, a tendency within contemporary psychoanalysis, not a more
formally organized or coherent school or system of beliefs. Our use of the term relational
signifies a dimension of theory and practice that has become salient across the wide spec-
trum of contemporary psychoanalysis. Now under the editorial supervision of Lewis Aron
and Adrienne Harris, with the assistance of Associate Editors Steven Kuchuck and Eyal
Rozmarin, the Relational Perspectives Book Series originated in 1990 under the editorial
eye of the late Stephen A. Mitchell. Mitchell was the most prolific and influential of the
originators of the relational tradition. Committed to dialogue among psychoanalysts, he
abhorred the authoritarianism that dictated adherence to a rigid set of beliefs or technical
restrictions. He championed open discussion, comparative and integrative approaches, and
promoted new voices across the generations.
Included in the Relational Perspectives Book Series are authors and works that come
from within the relational tradition, extend and develop that tradition, as well as works that
critique relational approaches or compare and contrast it with alternative points of view.
The series includes our most distinguished senior psychoanalysts, along with younger con-
tributors who bring fresh vision. A full list of titles in this series is available at https://www.
routledge.com/mentalhealth/series/LEARPBS.
Note
1 G reenberg, J. & Mitchell, S. (1983). Object relations in psychoanalytic theory. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Relationships in Development
Infancy, Intersubjectivity, and Attachment
Stephen Seligman
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Stephen Seligman
The right of Stephen Seligman to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-0-415-88001-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-88002-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-85082-4 (ebk)
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To Mary
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Contents
Acknowledgments x
Permissions xiii
What to expect from this book xv
Introduction: Why developmental psychoanalysis? 1
PART I
How we got here: A roadmap to psychoanalytic
theories of childhood and development 15
1 Childhood has meaning of its own:
Freud and the invention of psychoanalysis 21
2 Theory I: Foreshadowings: Core themes and
controversies in the early Freudian theories 32
3 The baby at the crossroads: The structural model, Ego
Psychology, and object relations theories 41
4 Theory II: What is a “robust developmental perspective?” 62
5 The postwar diversification and pluralization of psychoanalysis
in the United States: Interdisciplinary expansion, the widening
clinical scope, and the new developmentalism 73
PART II
The relational baby: Intersubjectivity
and infant development 83
6 Infancy research: Toward a relational-developmental
psychoanalysis 85
viii Contents
7 Clinical implications of infancy research: Affect, interaction, and
nonverbal meaning 99
8 Theory III: The relational baby: Psychoanalytic
theory and technique 117
9 Continuities from infancy to adulthood:
The baby is out of the bathwater 122
10 Theory IV: The move to the maternal: Gender, sexualities,
and the Oedipus Complex in light of intersubjective
developmental research 136
PART III
Attachment and recognition in clinical process:
Reflection, regulation, and emotional security 143
11 Intersubjectivity today: The orientation and the concept 147
12 Attachment theory and research in context:
Clinical implications 151
13 Recognition and reflection in infancy and psychotherapy:
Convergences of attachment theory and psychoanalysis 156
14 Mentalization and metaphor, acknowledgement and grief:
Forms of transformation in the reflective space 175
15 Infant–parent interactions, phantasies, and an “internal two-person
psychology”: Kleinian and intersubjective views of projective
identification and the intergenerational transmission of trauma 193
PART IV
Vitality, activity, and communication
in development and psychotherapy 215
16 Coming to life in time: Temporality, early deprivation, and the
sense of a lively future 219
Contents ix
17 Forms of vitality and other integrations: Daniel Stern’s
contribution to the psychoanalytic core 240
PART V
Awareness, confusion, and uncertainty:
Nonlinear dynamics in everyday practice 249
18 Feeling puzzled while paying attention: The analytic mindset
as an agent of therapeutic change 253
19 Dynamic systems theories as a framework for psychoanalysis:
Change processes in development and therapeutic action 268
20 Searching for core principles: Louis Sander’s synthesis of the
biological, psychological, and relational 292
References 301
Index 327