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At a time when psychoanalytic theory is being questioned from several directions, the theoretical concepts arising from Margaret S. Mahler's research of the first three years of life stand out for their clarity, their firm clinical foundation, verifiability by others, and their usefulness in understanding normal and abnormal behavior of children. Her work inspired the writing of this volume.
Each paper is original and uses an aspect of her work as a starting point. The three areas most seminal for these papers are the symbiotic phase, the four subphases of separation-individuation, and her approach to the treatment of psychotic children. The wide range of stimulating topics covered attests to the impact of Mahler's teaching, research, and writing on her students, collaborators, and colleagues who are the authors of this festschrift.
Before Mahler's formulation of the normal autistic, symbiotic, and separation-individuation phases, the main conceptual framework of analysts viewing child development comprised the psychosexual stages proposed by Freud and enriched by Erikson. Mahler's conceptualizations are a major addition to the Freud-Erikson framework. This volume explains, applies, verifies, and expands Mahler's statements and therein rests the vital significance of the book.
It is not possible to give adequate coverage to each high quality contribution. After the Editors' Foreword and Ritvo's history of Mahler's professional career, the papers are divided into five sections. Part I consists of primarily theoretical papers. Topics are the capacity to love (Bergmann); the nature of thought in childhood play (Galenson), creatively discussed by Greenacre and McDevitt; the relation of organ-object imagery to self and object representations