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Psychoanalysis has been enriched in recent decades by the contributions of developmental researchers, who have provided an indispensable window through which our traditional reconstructions about early development can, at least potentially, be studied, confirmed, revised, or refuted. Particularly influential have been the observers of infant behavior, whose studies have led to substantial reconsideration of the accepted wisdom about the affective and cognitive capacities of very young children, their intrinsic, biologically founded adaptive organization, and the range of individual differences among them. Although the significance of these findings for clinical practice has been a matter of controversy (see Dowling and Rothstein, 1989), there is no doubt that they have led to a major reassessment of our conceptions of the early stages of human mental life.
Preeminent among those whose work has stimulated this reassessment has been Robert N. Emde, M.D., whose careful, systematic, and inventive studies have for almost thirty years focused on the social development of the infant and the central role of affect in this process. I shall attempt in this essay to review briefly some of the essential aspects of Emde's work and to suggest some theoretical and clinical implications it may present for psychoanalysis as it enters its second century.
It is important to note that Emde began his researches under the aegis of Rene Spitz, the pioneer figure in the psychoanalytically informed observational study of early infant behavior. It was Spitz