You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The questions we are considering today touch not only psychoanalysis, but all the behavioral sciences. Indeed, doctors, pediatricians, criminologists, social workers, guidance counselors, psychologists, teachers, biologists, ethologists, and others have their science and art deeply rooted in mothering theory. Not only does it influence the professional practice of specialists, but it concerns all parents who, too frequently confused by a cacophony of voices, turn to us for help and guidance.“It is not unreasonable,” said Anna Freud,“for parents and educators to expect enlightenment from psychoanalysis.”61c
Educational systems, social and racial issues, Headstart programs and other supplementary enrichment efforts involving billions of dollars, crime, even the issues of war and peace in the nuclear age, are involved in the questions before us. The importance and consequences of mothering cannot be overestimated.
Strange as it may seem, serious concern about the first three or four years of childhood development has often lagged. Even Freud can be said to have failed to focus on the pre-Oedipal period.142 While stringent requirements for grade-school teachers have long existed, it is only recently that nursery schools have begun to establish similar standards. No requirements exist for governesses, maids or other nannies, or even mothers, who care for children in the home. Since the days of Aristotle, all mothers have been regarded as the best ones to rear their own children.142
In our field, centering on child analysis, therapeutic approaches, analytic theory, mothering theory, ego psychology, or object relations, there is little if any consensus.118 This is true not only in psychoanalysis but also in the other disciplines concerned with the human condition