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[Tactile-symbiotic relationship as the earliest step of child development]
1Psychiatrischen Universitätsklinik Basel.
Insights
The tactile-symbiotic mother-child relationship is crucial for early development, influencing later object relations and ego functions. Disturbances in this bond can lead to personality disorders and major depressions.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Psychoanalysis
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Sigmund Freud emphasized orality in child development.
- Recent research highlights the tactile-symbiotic mother-child relationship.
- This early bond forms the foundation for later object relations and ego functions.
Observation:
- The symbiotic-narcissistic relationship in early childhood reactivates in adult object relations.
- Ego functions like projective identification, identification, and transference develop from this basal relationship.
- The capacity for free decision regarding objects emerges at a later stage.
Findings:
- Individuals with narcissistic personality disorders and borderline personality disorders often experienced early childhood deficiencies, overprotection, or conditional attention.
- Impaired ego functions correlate with an infant's inability to fully experience or accept presented attention.
- Narcissistic emptiness in major depressions may stem partly from genetic predispositions.
Implications:
- Understanding early mother-child dynamics is key to addressing personality disorders.
- Therapeutic interventions may need to focus on repairing early relational deficits.
- Genetic factors likely play a role in the manifestation of narcissistic traits and depressive conditions.
Abstract:
Whereas Sigmund Freud considered the orality to be the beginning of the child development, in the last two decades the tactile-symbiotic mother-child-relationship came into the center of scientific attention. The symbiotic-narcissistic basal relationship of early childhood is reactivated in each later object relation. On this basis all active ego performances are built up, as e.g. the projective identification (archaic form), the identification, the transference (in psychotherapy), the regression etc. as well as the delimination from the object. The next level of the object relation is that of the free decision for or against an object. People with narcissistic personality disorders (narcissistic neuroses), having a constituent ego, and borderline personality disorders which occur in individuals with a fragmentation-prone ego, have suffered in their early childhood under deficiency experiences or the experiences of overprotection or of an attention under conditions. The more the individuals were disturbed also in their ego functions, the more an incapacity of the infant has to be supposed to experience or to admit the attention really presented to it. In major depressions the narcissistic emptiness or depletion seems to be at least partially the consequence of a genetic predisposition.