You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I Am Going to discuss two issues which Michael Fordham raised in his paper, ‘The emergence of child analysis’ (this Journal, October 1980 issue, Vol. 25, 4). First, his statement, under the heading ‘Fusion’, when he talks of a view of infancy which states that mother and foetus, and mother and infant, are either all the time, or periodically, in a state of fusion, i.e., one cannot be distinguished from the other: this state is sometimes described as paradisal or blissful (FORDHAM I). He goes on to say that in England I have developed this idea. That is a misunderstanding of my position. Second, the discussion on the nature of the self, and Fordham's conclusion that it is not an archetype. I am not in agreement with this conclusion, and welcome the opportunity to discuss and amplify both these questions, which I believe are closely linked.
To start with Fordham's statement that I have been working on mother-infant states of fusion: in fact, I have been working on images of mother-infant relationships which have occurred in the analytic material of my adult patients. That, of course, is a very different matter from the study of the actual infant and his mother, although the latter may throw some light on the former. I have explored the implications of these mother-infant images belonging to my adult patients' inner world, regarding them as symbols with a complexity of meanings. They appeared to relate to an unconscious complex in the patient's psyche with an archetypal and a personal dimension. I have discussed the clinical implications in terms of the transference/countertransference, amplified the archetypal motifs in terms of union and separation, and I have linked them with my patient's personality structures, and to failures in early development (NEWTON 4, NEWTON 5, NEWTON, REDFEARN 6). All the patients who produced these images had schizoid personalities. Their material presented a basic pattern, although with great individual differences in the style and present