You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The interaction between parent and child is one of infinite complexity; in fact, the more closely it is examined, the more elusive and intricate it appears. The needs of an infant and of a mother are myriad, and the ways in which they intertwine make for the uniqueness of individual personality. An individual is unique precisely because he or she is the particular child of a particular set of parents, at a particular point in time, under particular circumstances. Each mother creates a unique child, just as each child creates a unique mother.
The creation of a child's psyche is begun many generations before his birth. The patterns of relating that evolve in his early relationship with his mother have their roots in the relationships of his ancestors, and he becomes heir to the family traditions. Even before his birth his personality is partly molded, because the personalities of his parents are existing entities. He is born into a family with specific needs and structure, and he is nurtured before and after birth by a mother who has a specific psychological constellation. The innumerable potentialities for character development, which are inherent in every human being, are thus naturally and necessarily limited and refined by a process that begins long before conception.
The needs and desires of any given mother throughout her life span create certain tendencies toward certain styles of mothering, and by doing so carve out a psychological niche in which future children are to develop. Her fantasies about her children, her desires for them, and, most important, her own unconscious needs serve to produce a particular psychological environment for her children—one that may fluctuate and vary but one that establishes a mold for certain personality characteristics. A child is thus nurtured by a mother whose history leads her to approach him in specific, individual ways. He responds to a pattern of conscious and unconscious cues that only that particular mother would need to