Separation Crisis in Two Blind Children

IN THIS ESSAY I PROPOSE TO BRING TOGETHER SOME OBSERVATIONS OF separation anxiety in blind children in the second year. The children in each case have been followed in our longitudinal studies of infants blind from birth. The twice monthly observations by clinically trained researchers have given us the opportunity to study the reactions to brief and prolonged separations within the context of a larger study of the developmental characteristics of blind infants.

I am primarily concerned in this paper with the developmental crisis as an event that is experienced by both mother and child, one in which the adaptive tendencies of the child and the adaptive modes of the mother are united as the two partners work toward solution and restoration of harmony. We have learned that if we can trace the threads in the intricate pattern, the adaptive solution "found" by the baby represents both his own modes of dealing with tension and external danger and those that were offered by his mother, out of her own repertoire of action and defense. What is selected, borrowed, and integrated into a stable adaptation is, of course, not the mother's coherent language of personality, but elements of her style or the small vocabulary of defense that can be assimilated by a very young child. If we use the developmental crisis as a model, we know that within a very short time after crisis is resolved in infancy, we may see the product in personality with a clinical lens—a new characteristic in personality, or new variations on an old theme, but we can no longer tra