| Focused primarily on the observation of Mahler and her colleagues, how children develop an increasing sense of separateness and of individual integrity was reviewed. Objects are irrelevant during the autistic phase(0-2 months)；the child seems to remain in a psychological shell. As the child develops a budding awareness of self and object, the mother and child begin to form two poles of the dyadic unity of the symbiotic phase(2-6 months).
Gradually differentiating from the mother, the baby enters the separation-individuation phase and its subphases：differentiation, practicing, and rapprochement. He becomes increasingly aware of his mother as a separate entity during the differentiation(hatching) subphase(6-10 months). Soon, increasing motor and cognitive skills seem to intoxicate the child with his own prowess, and he runs off from his mother and practicing his new-gained abilities. This subphase is called practising(10-16 months). A growing awareness of his own separateness and helplessness ushers in the subphase of rapprochement(16-24 months). The child moves to and fro, separating and returning, demanding and yet dependent. As rapprochement resolves, the child displays an increased confidence in his mother’s continued loving presence despite her occasional absences. Such an ability to retain an image of the mother as primarily gratifying but also frustrating is called emotional object constancy(24-36 months). The child develops a more stable and complex sense of individuality along with this increasing stable sense of the object.
These observations of separation and individuation phases are paralleled by a set of intrapsychic and interpersonal mechanisms observable as people grow and change in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. |
