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‘psychological birth’ of the child. At the height of both (secondary) narcissism and object love, the establishment the autonomous ego apparatus in close proximity to the mother follows, as the child's interest move from the mother to inanimate objects, signifying the libidinal investment in the service of the autonomous Ego functioning. The ‘ Rapprochement’ subphase from 15-18 to 24 months brings with it an awareness of separateness, reappearance of separation anxiety and an increased need to be with the mother. There is the dawning realization that the mother is actually a separate person who may not be always available, ushering the ‘Rapprochement Crisis’. During the ‘Rapprochement Crisis’ (with splitting at its height), the attitude of the child is affectively ambivalent swinging between a need for clinging onto the mother and a powerful need for separateness. The fear of losing the object's love becomes more evident, instead of the fear of losing the object of love. This is also the period during which there are rapidly evolving autonomous ego functions, marked by rapid gains in language and by the appearance of reality testing. Gender differences and gender identity are coming into awareness, interacting with the differentiation process. The optimal emotional availability of the mother, including her acceptance of the child’s ambivalence enable the child to libidinally invest the representation of the Self. Ultimately, the waning of infantile omnipotence is compensated for by selective identifications with the competent, tolerant, affectionate mother (Blum, 2004). The reaching of the final stage of “on the road to object constancy” at 24 – 36 months, though never fully achieved, implies a qualitatively new level of organization of relatively sustained object representations , based on internalization of libidinal attachment and relatedness rather than instinctual drive and temporary frustrations. Mahler, like Klein, believed that this stage can be reached when the child is able to integrate the previously defensively split off all good and all bad representations of the mothering figure, to establish a relatively constant internalized objects that can retain its identity even if the actual mothering figure does something that displeases the child. For the child to do this, he/she needs to be able to carry not only internal representations of actual physical objects, but also of these objects’ properties, such as desires, beliefs, and emotions (Mahler, Pine and Bergman 1975). Like Jacobson before her, Mahler created an interface between classical drive theory and the developmental theory of object relations by using the concept of symbiosis to refer to both a relationship in reality and to a libidinally determined internal fantasy (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983). Mahler’s use of Hartmann’s concepts of an average expectable environment (Hartmann, 1927/1964) and of adaptation (Hartmann, 1939) “moved the drive model in a direction which implicitly granted relation with other a much more central explanatory role …” (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983, p.282). In order to specify the ‘average expectable environment’, Mahler also referred to Winnicott’s (1960) concept of the “ordinary devoted/good enough mother” (Mahler 1961; Mahler & Furer, 1968). In this way she equated the child’s early environment with the specific person of the mother. In the context of the clinical work, Jacobson’s and Mahler’s focus on self and object representations contributed to future developments in the vast area of representational
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