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As already stressed in chapter three, the early life of the seriously preterm newborn or of the pathological newborn is characterized, on the one hand, by hyperstimulation and, on the other, by serious sensorial and affective deficiencies. According to Meltzer (1992), this condition can invite the onset of claustrophobic anxieties as well as of major psychopathological states.
Isolation and the absence of contact can correspond for the newborn to the claustrophobic anxiety of being thrown out or thrown away; while the physical hyperstimulation can correspond to the equally painful experience of being closeted in a very narrow environment, from which the newborn derives no comfort and which it does not understand but feels as constraining,