Considerations Regarding the Parent-Infant Relationship1

The subject 'The Theory of Parent-Infant Relationship, ' assigned for the papers shared by Dr Winnicott and me for discussion at the International Congress in 1961, is a broadly inclusive one. It is my understanding that the Committee designing the programme intended that these papers should not merely give a résumé of generally accepted theory of parent-child relationship in very early childhood, but should deal especially with those aspects of the subject to which the authors have devoted special investigative attention and concerning which they have developed points of view expanding, elaborating, or even diverging from theories already widely accepted. I have therefore entitled this paper 'Considerations Regarding the Infant-Parent Relationship'. This assignment is a pleasing one since it presents the opportunity and the obligation to consolidate and clarify work on certain problems of infantile development which have preoccupied me throughout all of the years of my psycho-analytic practice.

It is necessary, too, to define our subject further. The term infant may be variously used. From the angle of the law, an infant is a person below the age of full maturity—generally fixed in our Western countries at 21.3 The implication here is that the span of physical growth is definitely fulfilled by this time and that the mental capacity for full individual responsibility has correspondingly developed. In pediatric and general medical practice, the term infant is often used for the child who cannot yet walk. After this he becomes a toddler. Here then it designates approximately the first year or 18 months after birth. In certain educational groups, the infant is the child who may attend infant schools or not yet be in school at all. The distinction then corresponds in time to the oedipal period, the resolution of which gives an additional push of independence and expands the child's activity so markedly beyond the home and family circle. When in ps