Back to Table of Contents
IV. Ac. Margaret Mahler: Self and Object Representations As An Expansion of Drive Vicissitudes After Hartmann, one of the most influential expansions to the drive model encompassing new dimensions of psychological development came from Margaret Mahler. Mahler’s original interest in the child’s earliest object relations derived from her study of severe pathology in children – autism and symbiotic psychosis - where she noted an extreme inability to form a nurturing relationship with caregivers (Mahler, Ross and DeFries, 1949; Mahler, 1952; Mahler and Gosliner, 1955). This led to the development of a theory of normal child development, in which object relations and the self were seen as outgrowths of instinctual vicissitudes (See the entries OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY; SELF; EGO PSYCHOLOGY). Her Separation-Individuation theory (Mahler, Pine and Bergman 1975) provides both direct observational and psychoanalytic data that permit one to trace the stages of development Jacobson postulated. Although there was a traditional attention to the drives in her Separational-Individuation theory, the object relations focus was evident in the issues Mahler singled out as of particular developmental significance at each subphase, i.e., social smile, rather than sucking, initiating symbiosis (Blum 2004b). Overall, Mahler provided the clinical evidence that permitted the establishment of timetables for the developmental stages of internalized object relations proposed by Jacobson. Kernberg’s (1976, 1982) work on the pathology of internalized object relations of borderline conditions evolved in the context of that theoretical frame. IV. Ad. Fred Pine Further developing Hartmann’s (1939/58), Anna Freud’s (1936) and Margaret Mahler’s (Mahler, Pine and Bergman 1975) conceptualizations, Pine (1971, 1974, 1983) continued building conceptual bridges between drives and processes of learning, thinking, memory, and perception, mainly along two lines: 1. Separation-individuation and libidinal object constancy; and 2. A distorting (and inhibiting) effect of drives and object relationships upon cognitive functioning. He noted how the development of the memory image of the absent love object is designed to resolve the child’s polar wishes for autonomy on the one hand and closeness to mother on the other (Pine, 1971, 1974), whereby by carrying her image within him, the child can have his mother with him, with no sacrifice of his autonomy. In “The Development of Ego Apparatus and Drive”, Pine (1983) depicts the integral functional relationships between the thought processes, affects and drives. He writes: “Our drives—our needs and urges—must take the expressive shape made possible by the stimulus- receiving, and recording, and re-eliciting, and representational qualities of our cognitive apparatus…” (ibid, p.243).
157
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online