Some Clinical and Theoretical Implications of Infant Research

Fifteen or so years ago, when I first became interested in what research based on direct infant observation and experiment might contribute to the practice and theory of psychoanalysis, it was still possible to read a relatively small number of publications and claim to have a reasonable grasp of what there was to be learned about this subject. No more. Both the quantity and sophistication of infant research have grown apace, and so, even if it offered nothing more than an excellent compendium and summary of what the psychoanalyst and dynamically oriented psychotherapist should know about the early development of tension regulation, Psychoanalysis and Infant Research would be one of the few volumes I would consider an absolute must for student, teacher, and practitioner, but Lichtenberg achieves much more than that.

I would recommend that the reader begin with Chapter 12. Entitled “The Psychoanalytic Situation and Infancy.” It is here that Lichtenberg summarizes the various ways in which analysts have tried to “reconstruct” the infant from the memories and associations of adults in analysis, and the adultomorphic misconceptions that arose in that process. He then makes the case that the only way one may hope to get a view of the preverbal and, even more important, the presymbolic state of human mental functioning is to become