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This report from the Child Study Centre of the Yale University School of Medicine is based on the work of a research service which offers healthy and sick baby care to mothers chosen in the early months of pregnancy to participate in the project. The service covers all the vicissitudes of antenatal and postnatal care as well as the provision of nursery education. The present stage of the investigation focuses on the changes which can take place in a mother's attitude to a single child at different stages of its growth. The investigators found they were able to predict certain of these changes in advance, and are now aiming to assess the range of predictability which this type of study may make possible.
Four cases are presented in detail. In two of them marked improvement in maternal attitude was apparent and in two deterioration set in, changes in all cases being coincident with the child's initial strivings for independence. In both sets of cases, the mothers identified with their children on the basis of archaic id aspects of their personalities. The authors draw attention to the fact that when identification has become autonomous, and its energies neutralized within the ego, it opens the way for understanding of the object, and becomes a part of object relationship. Much of the ability of the mother to handle the small child and much of the difficulty in adjusting to its growth depends on her own capacity to make the shift from one type of identification to the other.