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A number of symptoms have appeared in both children and adolescents with striking frequency, suggesting the phenomenon of a syndrome. These are the findings presented by the child: inability to identify feelings, lack of motivation for school or work, depression, underachievement, and paucity and shallowness of relationships. In the adolescent, absence of date life, boredom, inability to “tune in” to one's own thinking, and minimal self-observing capacity are found. The child cannot delineate these complaints with specificity. Instead, parent or child will describe the symptoms as school failures, sense of hopelessness, and futility—even suicidal ideation, isolation, and “I don't know who I am or what I want!”
Upon repeated exploration of these symptoms, the psychodynamic etiology has become increasingly clear. These children suffer from early infantile affect dysruption, a syndrome that I am calling parental affect dyskinesia.1 This is how it occurs.
Normally, maternal—infant (paternal—infant as well) interaction provides the fundamental affect substance (matrix) in the initial moments, hours, and days of life. This bond of affect between parent and child acts as the soil in which the infantile-self will take root and develop. This can be compared to the human embryo, which takes root within the endometrial surface of the uterus. From this point on, growth and development of self (or embryo) is dependent on the health and nurturant capacity of the underlying maternal (paternal) affect core. Psycho-analytically, this relates to the parental state of being genuine, intuitive, empathic,