Prologue

This issue of psychoanalytic inquiry, Separation-Individuation Theory Revisited, is testimony to a theory that is here to stay, albeit attacked, revisited, and revised. Different researchers, some psychoanalytically trained and others not, have questioned Mahler's timetable for the four subphases of the separation-individuation process or prefer to view the process as one of attachment-individuation rather than separation-individuation (Lyons-Ruth, 1991). Some question the notion of stage (Pine, 1985), forgetting that the original concept of stage within psychoanalytic theory always has assumed that issues from different or the same levels of development can be present, active, and demanding of the child's attention simultaneously or successively.

The major controversy has been between Margaret Mahler and Daniel Stern. Without rehashing what is by now familiar knowledge, Stern believes that the infant does not start life in a normal autistic phase. Rather, the infant from birth is capable of differentiated responses to the environment, is interested in his or her environment, and is aware of a differentiation between self and object, albeit on a primitive level. It is from this position that Stern (1985) posits the exquisiteness of merger and union experiences; that is, from a background and perspective of differentiation. Stern (1991) gives considerable attention to the fantasy life of the mother and how this affects the early mother-child relationship. Also, he is interested in the process of how real interactions between mother and child (dyadic), and between mother, child, and father (triadic) form the basis for internalized object relations.

As a result of the Mahler-Stern debate, Mahler carefully reexamines her position. She holds strongly to her original notions of