Analysis of Mahler's Separation/Individuation Theory
... process at this sub phase is the child’s capability of ‘hatching’. Hatching as explained by Mahler refers to the child’s capability of acquiring permanent state of a sense of self. The hatch look of the child refers to her capability to sit securely while working with both hands and to reach for objects as well as scan her environment. She becomes a ‘hatched child’, alert and focused. The infant’s reaction to strangers could be characterized by either anxiety or curiosity and fascination. At the age of 9 months, the child is finally able to crawl, but he primarily crawl at his mom’s feet. The second sub phase Mahler named The Practicing Period. It begins at about 10 months of age and is characterized by the child’s rapidly developing loco motor skills, which he enjoys with pleasure and energy for he now plays with toys with joy and involvement. He is able to remain in standing position and he no more crawls at mother’s feet as Mahler points out. Mother’s presence is now taken for granted and he ‘takes great pleasure in feeding mother’ (Mahler, movie presented in Theories of Development class). The child now searches for contact with mother from a distance while exploring other activities and people. He is unaware of mother’s presence most of the time, yet he has the necessity to return to her at times for ‘emotional refueling’. At this stage, the child experiences frustration by his realization that he is not one entity with mother and she is not immediately there when he falls. He is capable of walking with mother’s help, yet at 15 months, the child experiences an inner urge to stand up and elevate and at this point walking fully replaces crawling. This particular urge to master the new skill of walking is suggested to be associated with Freud’s inner ego drives for mastering a new skill. When the mother leaves the room for short periods of time, the child is able to cope and is fully and emotionally invested into other things. When mother returns, the child continues its practice and does not seem in a rush to return to mother. The third sub phase called Rapprochement begins at 16 months and extends up to 24 months of age. Due to the fact that the child has a greater awareness of his separateness from mother at this stage and experiences a significant cognitive growth he shows an increased need for mother to share with him all the new learned skills and things acquired. Since he is aware of his distance from mother he has the need to constantly bring objects to her and show her his work. He takes most pleasure in mutual play with mother, wherein mother is joyous and aids him in a constructive play. Language becomes the most important skill at this period for he is now able to express his inner world to the outer reality. He has a great sense of autonomy and is protective of his own possessions and space. This stage is most importantly marked by the rapprochement crisis, which is characterized by the child’s helpless frustration and rage when unable to perform the task at hand and mother’s help is not at all helpful. As Mahler indicates the child’s depressed mood prevails and she is sad and longing. Since she is finally aware of his separateness from mother, she cannot cope with this frustration and does not want to separate. Mother must be emotionally available at all times to comfort the child. Children receive gratification in using objects in fantasy play. Yet, at last the toddler develops a higher degree of individuation and is finally capable of coping with mother’s absence. He develops object and self-constancy (awareness of existence of self and of other objects) and is reassured that if mother leaves the room, she will return. Finally, the fourth sub phase of separation- individuation, Individuation is marked by the child’s complete comfort with mother’s absence. The child possesses object constancy of mother’s image and unfolding of complex capacities finally prevails. The Child engages in constant reality testing, in yet more complex development of language and loco motor skills as well as in great symbolic play. I presently work with two-year-old children as an observer and an assistant teacher, at a setting almost identical to Mahler’s description. At the Early Childhood Center here at Sarah Lawrence College, we have a setting for two year olds and their moms, which serves the purpose of aiding little children cope with their interpsychic separation from mother and smoothen the process of their intellectual, social, personal and independent growth as well as their exploration of the real world. The Center has put a great emphasis on the significance and the critical role of Dramatic Play in the toddler’s attempt to construct reality and master new skills independently from mother. It occurred to me that in many institutions, where mothers leave their children while working, such as day care canters, kindergartens and preschools, the emphasis on play is relatively small. This is due to the fact that in our contemporary society play is taken to be a non-serious activity, which lacks any sort of significant meaning. Therefore, many institutions disregard Dramatic Play as part of their curriculum and place greater emphasis on ‘academic’ activities such as writing, counting and others. Yet, when a child is at the age of 2 or 3 it is hard to tell him that play is meaningless and he must learn more ‘valuable’ activities such as writing and reading. A misconception has brought us to the conclusion that pleasurable activities are meaningless and a waist of time. In our institute, play is regarded as the most valuable work of the child, and his most significant means of constructing reality, learning about purpose and meaning, developing his ego functions. Erik Erikson once identified the stage of Industry/Inferiority as one of the developmental stages a child experiences. I wander how a child is to grasp a sense of industry, to master a skill and feel confident in his activities if not through play and the countless opportunities it gives the infant to learn, explore new meanings and purposes, master a skill and develop cognitively and personally. At the Early Childhood Center, I have the chance to observe and directly interact with two-year-old children and their mothers and become an active participant in facilitating mother/child interactions in the child’s task and inner drive to individuate. I must tell from the experience I have so far that Mahler’s theory generally applies well in reality and is constantly reoccurring throughout our day with the children as a secure confirmation of the processes occurring in these 2-year-old children’s psyches. Yet, sometimes I wander whether we as adults only use and confirm this theory in search of some sort of security and assurance that we know what we are doing. We live in a desperate desire to understand children and we feel insecure that we might have no idea about what goes on in a child’s mind and how he becomes aware of himself, whether he has collective memories or indeed exists in some sort of a ‘bubble’ or is completely aware of his environment from birth. In our desire to aid them and facilitate their experience of growth we are ready to accept almost any theoretical structure that makes general sense. It seems to me that the adults and the mothers at the ECC are the ones who have a harder time coping with separating from their child, for adults are presumably truly aware of what loss and pain means and feels like. I continually come across situations, wherein at the beginning of the school year, some children were beside their mothers at all times and just wouldn’t let go. Some of them were still breast- fed (at the age of 2) and some of them were the only children in their family. Certainly one must recognize the fact that family structure is a great determinant in the child’s process of individuation, but let us not exclude the significance of the role that many other determinants play as well. I work with a child who has been waited for 11 years before he was born. He now attempts to explore slowly but surely and attempts to interact with other children. Yet, his mother just wouldn’t let go of him and is incapable of leaving him out of sight. She insists that she is the only person he shares his play with. Another child in my group is the 5th in his family. His mother has had 2 of her other children at the center with this program and is completely confidant that her child will cope well and will learn much. He indeed seems to engage in many activities comfortably enough to remain unaware of his mother throughout more than 2/3 of the time at the center. His mother is fully comfortable and lets him explore. In general though, in the group where I work, most mothers have harder time letting go and separating from their child than the infant himself. Certainly, there are many other determinants of how the course of action that the mother initiates will be channeled. Yet, the mere fact of the mother’s greater difficulty with coping with her child’s separation is not to be excluded as means of conditioning and determining the child’s own capacity for exploring and separating. Some more reflections and objections: According to Mahler, normal autism and normal symbiosis are prerequisites to the onset of the normal separation- individuation process (p.47). Yet, as one reads further at the individual case-studies described in her work, one realizes that in many occasions, the child appears to have very difficult time with his mother during early symbiosis, but proceeds normally and well during later stages of separation-individuation. Mahler does not exclude the latter option either, but it seems as if it is not necessary for the child to be consistent in his relationship to mother i.e. it is not necessary for him to have a smooth symbiosis so that he goes through the later stages of separation/individuation in a non-problematic manner. Furthermore, one ponders upon the issue of the special setting created by Mahler. This specially designed setting has some limitations in observing an infant’s behavior and patterns of separation-individuation. In my opinion, it is strongly recommended that, along with working with the child at this special setting, the child is observed in a parallel manner in his natural home setting for this is one of the most significant determinants of the overall development of the child. The way the child is being parented and treated at home is quite different than the way it is treated at ‘school’ (a social setting with the purpose of educating and aiding the child in his growth and development). The other unfamiliar objects in the school setting- such as observers, other children, and their parents might have a largely different impact on the child’s behavior (although that behavior might not be consciously motivated) in a social setting. The child who experiences the separation –individuation process in these circumstances is equally concerned with the additional process of integration with a social environment, which seems to have an equally large importance to the child’ growth as its separation from mother does. As pointed out in Cohen, Stern, and Balaban’s “Observing and Recording the Behavior of Young Children”, “The physical space has a strong effect on both children and teachers and on the quality of the program”(p.13). When one observes the child’s use of materials, one must be aware of the setting; “Who are the nearby significant people and activities? What is the amount and kind of adult supervision” as well as the stimulus-whether the activity is teacher-stimulated, imitation of another child or self-initiated etc…. (p.40). For instance, at the ECC, while I was observing these specific conditions of V’s play and use of materials, I heard her talking to herself from a distance. When I approached closer, I realized she was speaking to the sculpture she has just made and seemed to be very involved in creating a plot fitting the shape of her sculpture. When she felt my presence, she turned around with her back facing me and became instantly quiet. I had disturbed the free flow of her thoughts by observing her (I was indeed not too close to her, and tried my best to remain unnoticed). She could have developed her thoughts into a much more explicit, complex and constructive story, but I disturbed this process. This situation is an example of how different her process of symbolic representations could have been should she have been alone in the room. Observing children in such a specially designed setting limits the study since children act differently when others are present. At home, separation-individuation might take quite a different direction when the child is more comfortable around mother. With the presence of other children, teachers and observers an infant’s separation-individuation might be disturbed for in the process of creating object constancy, while it is difficult to adjust to the constancy of one’s mother’s existence, the child has to deal with recognizing other unfamiliar objects, as well and act ‘appropriately’ around them. The toddler is in a social setting and interacts with other kids and other people, which circumstance might increase the fear in him to individuate or his intimidation to interact with other children and adults. It also happens so that the child might grow to attach himself to a different object in the classroom. At the ECC of Sarah Lawrence College I have observed such reaction in children. J., for instance, was close to his mother at all times at the beginning of the program. Further, he grew out of his desperate attachment to mother and began exploring gradually the room and the activities it offered. He reached the point where he spent literally 100% of his time oblivious to his mother. Yet, he began sharing all of his activities with me. He asked me questions about the nature of a game; he came to show me every painting he made, he asked me to remain close to him when engaging in an activity. About two weeks ago, I was absent from the class. The next time I went in, he appeared oblivious to me, as well. Each time I asked him a question, he ignored it and did not respond, as if I was not in the room at all. When I finally asked him why he does not answer my questions, he responded with a question: “ Where were you last time?” he asked. I replied that I had an important business to take care of and could not attend the class. After a considerable time of interrogating me about what I had to do, he said:” I missed you last time”. I consider it a great deal of change in the child’s object constancy process when such a reaction as the one described above takes place. It does not appear impossible that the child transfers his attachment techniques from mother to other objects outside of home, where he is forced in a way to deal with reality and individuate his activities. After all, we all leave home at one point of our lives, yet we do not remain alone. We attach to others; peers, lovers, teachers. We find it significant to replace our primary objects of love and attention with other such and similar objects. Transferability of attachment as a coping technique of separation is not to be ignored. Further, Mahler acknowledges the presence of another limiting aspect of her study. It is the very fact that the researches lack self-reports for obviously children so young are incapable of reasoning and articulating such complex concepts as inter and intrapsychic processes and resolutions. They are incapable of speaking altogether and therefore, the conclusions, which follow from the interpretation of a child’s actions, emotions and subconscious processes, are primarily based on the researcher’s certainly biased adult lens. Certainly, bias is unavoidable, for all in nature that is discussed, observed and recorde...