Separation-individuation and reconstruction in psychoanalysis.

Abstract

The development constructs of Mahler and her coworkers are seen as clinically based theory which enrich practice. Freud discovered the importance of the infantile past and psychosexual development in particular, he related these findings to the psychodynamics of neurotic structures, and devised a successful therapeutic model based on his findings. Mahler has uncovered and detailed other aspects of infantile mental life, related genetically not to neurotic byt also to other mental structures, thereby broadening the range of applicability of Freud's therapeutic model. Clinical vignettes are offered depicting unresolved residua from the infantile developmental phases described by Mahler. The issue of the analyst's and the patient's conviction concerning reconstructions that attempt to reach across the "primal repression barrier" is discussed. Finally, it is suggested that working through involves, among other things, completion of developmental process that had been interrupted in the childhood of the patient.