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May 27, 1980. IN THE BEGINNING: CONTRIBUTIONS TO A PSYCHOANALYTIC DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. Fred Pine, Ph.D.
This paper is a response to Dr. Emanuel Peterfreund's challenging paper, "Some Critical Comments on Psychoanalytic Conceptualizations of Infancy." Dr. Pine stated that he is generally in agreement with Peterfreund's two criticisms of psychoanalytic formulations concerning the preverbal infant: 1) that there is adultomorphization of infancy; and 2) that normal development is characterized in terms of hypotheses about later states of psychopathology. However, this does not mean that only the language of neurophysiology, genetics, and information theory can be appropriate to describe early infancy, as Peterfreund contends. To show that the language and concepts of psychoanalysis are still useful, Dr. Pine concentrated on three issues: 1) the concept of a phase, with particular attention to "moments" and "backgrounds" of experience; 2) aspects of the so-called normal