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Doris Silverman's critique of my recent paper reviewing and u pdating Mahler's concepts of symbiosis and separation-individuation (Pine 2004) is better directed at our original book , now thirty years old. Since the time of Emanuel Peterfreund's strong critique (1978), a work referred to by Silverman, I have written a series of increasingly clear and strong revisions of the ideas in that book (Pine 1981, 1990, 1992, 2004). Those writings are responsive to Silverman's entire present critique. In this note, I will assume the reader is familiar with Silverman's critique and not refer back to her paper point by point.
Silverman masses arguments and data regarding the infant's capacities for differentiation from birth onward and regarding aspects of subjective state (most notably, intentionality). I am quite familiar with that literature, regard it as invaluable, use it in my teaching, and have based theoretical writings on it (Pine 1990, 2005), writings that are central to my core views on psychoanalysis today. And I have clearly said, both in the paper Silverman critiques and elsewhere, that Mahler certainly “did not have it right” in her view of the fully undifferentiated state of the infant. (Mahler recognized this before her death as well, and was equally interested in the “competent infant” literature.)
Are ideas about merger, undifferentiatedness, boundarylessness— each a suggestive equivalent of “symbiosis,” to flesh out the term— still worth considering? My answer is yes, for three reasons. First, a full picture of mental life may require them. Second, ideas regarding merger experiences would help us understand one set of functions served by later experiences that Mahler referred to as differentiation, practicing, rapprochement, and object constancy, experiences that mark