‘Overdependency’ and the Theory of Spoiling

The child is all the more clinging the more it has an inner conviction that separation will repeat itself.

Following presentation of some of the evidence on which the theoretical position adopted here is based, it is useful to consider briefly the whole array of hypotheses that have been proposed to account for why a particular individual is prone to a high degree of overdependency or separation anxiety, the terms by which anxious attachment is usually known. Hypotheses advanced by psychoanalysts and others working in a psychoanalytic tradition not only give varying weight to constitutional and environmental factors but also inculpate different and in some respects contradictory factors in each class. The five main hypotheses, each of which has adherents, are outlined briefly below.

Two lay emphasis on constitutional factors, as follows:

1. Some children have inherently a greater amount of libidinal need in their constitution than others, and so are more sensitive than others to an absence of gratification (Freud 1917b).

2. Some children have inherently a stronger death instinct than others, which manifests itself in unusually strong persecutory and depressive anxiety (Klein 1932).

   Three lay emphasis on environmental factors:

3. Variations in the birth process and severe traumata occurring during the first weeks of postnatal life may increase the (organic) anxiety response and heighten the anxiety potential, thereby causing a more severe reaction to later (psychological) dangers met with in life (Greenacre 1941; 1945).

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4. Some children are ‘spoiled’ by excess of early libidinal gratification; they therefore demand more of it and, when not gratified, miss it more (Freud 1905b; 1917b; 1926a).

5. Some children are made excessively sensitive to the possibility of separation or loss of love through experiencing either actual separation (Edelston 1943; Bowlby 1951) or threats of abandonment or loss of love (; ).

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