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In this essay, I raise a question about how we conceptualize the relations between subjects and objects in early childhood development. In seeking an answer one must decide where to look for data on how infants think, whether from our own psychoanalytic practices or from academic studies outside our field. On one hand, if we use only evidence from adult analyses we are open to criticisms of conceptualizing infants as little pathological adults. On the other hand, wholesale importation of findings from normative infant studies runs its own double risk: reducing our patients to adults stuck in aberrant infant patterns, such as insecure attachment patterns, and losing an opportunity to contribute our uniquely psychoanalytic perspective to the literature on early childhood thinking. My choice has been a third way: to put both sources into a dialogue with each other (Litowitz, 1998, 2007c).
Comparing and integrating data generated from empirical infant and child research studies with clinical experiences from psychodynamic therapeutic practice can lead to a more nuanced understanding of cognition in general and of early thought processes in particular. A better understanding of the child's capacities to solve intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts leads to more informed interventions as these early solutions emerge in their adult transferences to us. For example, previously I had examined the clinical uses of negation in light of research findings on how children master a sequence of forms for expressing negation: rejection, refusal, and denial (Litowitz, 1998). Recognizing which type of negation emerges in the transference enables us to infer whether the intersubjective struggle is over impingement or engagement. Most recently, I similarly explored the sources and structures of unconscious fantasies (Litowitz, 2007c). The material I am presenting here has evolved from that recent analysis, specifically from exploring purported features of primary process thinking in li