This paper is intended as a critique of the developmental notion of individuation that finds common expression in certain strands of American psychoanalysis. This critique proceeds from two different but interrelated streams of thought: various accounts of object relations theories and their relationship to accounts of infant development, and concepts of the feminine and the maternal that inhere in these different accounts. Finally, some attempt is made to place these different accounts in their cultural and symbolic contexts, and to highlight implications for the further articulation of theory.