The psychic life of the young infant: review and critique of the psychoanalytic concepts of symbiosis and infantile omnipotence.
The subjective life of the young infant is examined in the light of classical psychoanalytic theory and of recent empirical studies of early infant behavior and development. The concepts of symbiosis and omnipotence are argued to be products of poetic but largely misguided reconstructions from adult experience, providing a questionable developmental foundation for contemporary psychodynamic theories of object relations.
D002657:Child Development; D003071:Cognition; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D007223:Infant; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012043:Regression, Psychology