A developmental view of identifications resulting from maternal impingements

This paper attempts to understand in early developmental terms one of a group of patients who demonstrate a powerful identification with a conflicted aspect of their mother. In addition to the strong identification with the maternal pathology, the group is characterized by a history of maternal impingements (Winnicott) through which the infants were exposed to the conflicted psychological state of the mother. A case history of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy emphasizes the vicissitudes of the transference and countertransference. The patient presented had been exposed to premature awareness of separateness from the mother as a result of the maternal impingements. The identification with the maternal pathology is seen primarily as a defensive attempt to create the illusion that the characteristics of the impingements were actually a creation of the patient herself. This defensive identification was strengthened by the mother's inability to be responsive to the patient, except in so far as the patient entered into the "beam" of the maternal pathology. Parts of the work of Melanie Klein, Winnicott and Greenacre which make up the theoretical context for the developmental formulation of the type of identification under discussion are presented and several clinical implications of the developmental formulation are discussed.