[Psychoanalysis and early childhood research. Some basic topics of the debate]

In Dornes' view it is time for psychoanalytic development psychology to stand back from its preoccupation with the reconstructed child and gain access to the real child via direct observation, thus re-establishing contact with the state of research in neighbouring disciplines. Such direct observation would both stimulate a review of the cogency of the symbiosis and borderline theories of normal early development and question the assumption of lack of psychic differentiation in newborn children. So far, the author contends, psychoanalytic theory has both underestimated and overestimated the abilities of infants, ascribing to them in the latter case the capacity for complicated psychic operations (hallucinatory wish fulfillment, grandeur fantasies, projective identifications) which are in fact beyond their powers.