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The development of a child's understanding of what those around him may be thinking about or feeling is of central relevance to our theories concerning the nature of borderline pathology. The psychoanalytically informed naturalistic observation of children promises to yield considerable insight into the sequence of development leading to the child's understanding of the way others around them function. Dunn (1988) considers four aspects of this development: 1) understanding others' feelings, 2) understanding others' intentions, 3) understanding rules and conventions and 4) understanding that others have minds.
Winnicott (1956) recognised that infants are part of a social world from their earliest moments and infant research over the past two decades has revealed just how active is their social participation. To a certain degree, babies come well-equipped to develop the capacity to comprehend the emotions and behaviour of others and the thought processes which underlie their actions. They possess from birth an attentional bias for the sound-wave lengths which are likely to contain the mother's voice and for shapes which possess the spacial characteristics of the human face. Infants show more interest in, and learn faster about stimuli, which they can influence or control.
Trevarthen (1977) has demonstrated that from as early as two months infants are capable of distinguishing a voice which is directed at them from one talking to someone else. Recent work by Walker-Andrews (1988) revealed that infants from as early as four months are capable of discriminating different affects. At seven months, they are already sensitive to the direction of gaze of