Blos begins with a clear summary of Mahler's concept of separation-individuation: "separation refers to the psychological process of differentiation, the setting apart of one being from another. Individuation refers to … the process of consolidation and integration within the newly differentiated being." He then presents two cases which illustrate the maternal side of the differentiation process, in which mother-infant psychotherapy allowed "the maternal neurosis which threatened to engulf the baby and distort development" to be placed where it belonged—in the mother's past. The first case demonstrates how a control struggle around eating originated in the mother's own struggle with her strict and estranged mother. When the mother achieved insight into this, the struggle was ended, and the infant began once again to thrive. The second case was more complicated; the mother saw her