Infant Studies and Clinical Work with Adults

During a workshop on the relevance of infant observational research for clinical work with adults held at the American Psychoanalytic Association Meeting in New York, November 1982, two contradictory points of view were argued. One view of the infant, presented by Charles Brenner, stated that the psychological organization of the neonate and young toddler differs so markedly and undergoes so much transformation during the oedipal period that knowledge of the infant can have no or only a very limited influence on the conduct of the analysis of an adult. A second view presented by both James McLaughlin and myself stated that recognition of the complex behavior of infants revealed by infant studies calls for a radical reconception of development. Thus, although symbolic processing is absent until the middle of the second year or even because its absence raises questions about efforts to reconstruct developmental events of the first 18 months, the knowledge that emerges from infant studies has influenced and cannot fail to continue to shape significant aspects of analytic work with adults (see Gedo, 1979, 1985; Lichtenberg, 1983a; Gaensbauer, 1985).