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As a participant in a symposium honouring Anna Freud on her 86th birthday, I was asked to speak about her contribution to understanding the role of the family in child development and child psychopathology1. As this is a broad topic and Anna Freud's collected works are replete with pertinent thoughts on the subject, a focus was clearly required. I therefore decided to present some of her ideas on the importance of the mother during the child's earliest years in the development of a ‘psychological’ object, culminating in the attainment of object constancy by the time the child reaches his second birthday, an achievement which is of great importance in permitting the child to go on to develop human relationships with all the emotional richness and complexity with which we are familiar.
In a symposium in 1961, Anna Freud, in a discussion of papers on the theory of the parent-infant relationship (1962 [1961]), remarks how interest in the phase of early dependence in child development is ‘an old friend’ often appearing in her father's writings when he discussed the ‘biological factor’. I will present in full one such quotation of Sigmund Freud's since it will be the starting point for our discussion:
The biological factor is the long period of time during which the young of the human species is in a condition of helplessness and dependence. Its intra-uterine existence seems to be short in comparison with that of most animals, and it is sent into the world in a less finished state. As a result, the influence of the real external world upon it is intensified and an early differentiation between the ego and the id is promoted. Moreover, the dangers of the external world have a greater importance for it, so that the value of the object which can alone protect it against them and take the
An extended version of this paper was first presented at a symposium organized by the Michigan Society for Clinical Social work in Dec
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An extended version of this paper was first presented at a symposium organized by the Michigan Society for Clinical Social work in Dec