The Infanticidal Attachment

Kahr's article introduces the concept of an infanticidal attachment relationship in infancy as a potential precursor to the development of schizophrenia. He argues that the infanticidal attachment is characterized by all of the failures and inconsistencies of caretaking so prevalent in the classic disorganized attachment state of mind, but would contain, as well, one or more specific experiences of deadliness that would have made the infant fear for his or her life on one or more occasions. He goes on to propose that the further presence of experiences of premature morbidization and psychological infanticide - early near-death experiences and early death threats - creates an infanticidal introject which may play a role in the aetiology of schizophrenia. He identifies five different forms of premature morbidization that include actual parental death threats, the replacement child syndrome, aborted abortions, and murder of pets and death of a twin in utero. He illustrates this proposal with a clinical account of the ways in which the infanticidal introject may feature in the developmental history of Vita, who eventually receives a formal diagnosis of schizophrenia.