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MAHLER AND HER COLLEAGUES THROUGH THEIR LONG, EXCITING and diligent observational work with normal infants and toddlers have provided us with a particularly interesting and useful concept: separation-individuation. As we all know, separation refers to the psychological process of differentiation, the setting apart of one being from another. Individuation refers to the complementary and intimately related process of consolidation and integration within the newly differentiated being.
Mahler's research, and much of the subsequent work with this concept and its many derivatives, has centered upon the infant/toddler's experience of object and self, psychic structure formation, and the vicissitudes of the child's further development. Although the emphasis has been on delineating the psychic development of the young child, the parental and interactional aspects of these processes have been clearly acknowledged. For example, Mahler (1963) stated, "The Leitmotifs of … maternal vicissitudes are reflected in their children's individuation" (p. 310). She further said that since her studies were of mother-toddler pairs in nontherapeutic situations, i.e., an