Chapter 1 Mother—Infant Mutual Influence and Precursors of Psychic Structure

There is a long-standing tradition in psychoanalysis linking child development and the organization of psychic structure. Recent research on mother–infant interaction in the first six months of life can illuminate the development of psychic structure, specifically the precursors of self and object representations and the emerging organization of infant experience.

We will focus on the prerepresentational origins of psychic structure and explore the relevance of early patterns of experience in the first six months of life, before representation and symbolic thought are established. Representation can be assumed to begin toward the end of the first year and to undergo major reorganization at one to one-and-a-half years, and only in the third year can symbolic functioning be assumed to be fully established (Piaget, 1954). The discussion of the prerepresentational origins of psychic structure will be limited to the relevance of the purely social exchanges between mother and infant. Such issues as self-regulation and the management of “alone states” will not be addressed. The infants studied were all