The Era of Separation-Individuation

Irefer in my title to an era rather than a phase of separation-individuation because my focus is only secondarily on that phase in the life of the developing child. My primary focus will be on the era in the growth of psychoanalytic developmental theory that saw the coming to fruition of Mahler's ideas on what she referred to as symbiosis and the separation-individuation process. Reference to an era implies a birth and development, a period of ascendancy, and a decline or a full ending; and I will arrange my remarks around these three stages. But let me state in advance my position on the end of the era, for there are many voices proclaiming that it has ended—or that it began in error altogether. These voices stem from the originators and observers of the no-longer-so-new infant research that purports to demonstrate that the infant is too sophisticated cognitively ever to have been in a symbiotic phase (i.e., in a phase where it failed to differentiate mother and self, and where it instead had experiences of merger, or boundarylessness, or undifferentiatedness with respect to the mother). I shall offer a rejoinder to that argument. So I shall actually be addressing the era in terms of its birth, ascendancy, and then (following Mark Twain) the reports of its death, which have been exaggerated.

Mahler's work holds an important position as the link between aspects of the expansion of psychoanalytic theory and practice that both preceded and followed it—respectively, ego psychology and