10 - Infants' knowledge of self, other, and relationship

Summary

Infants' sense of self and other has been supposed by both attachment theory (Bretherton, 1987; Harter, 1983; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985; Sroufe & Fleeson, 1985) and psychodynamic theory (Emde, 1983; Kernberg, 1976; Kohut, 1984; Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975; Stern, 1985) to be a function of interactions with primary caregivers. Primary emphasis on the influence of interactions on infants' acquisition of self reflects a bias in our theorizing. Winnicott (1965), for example, stated that “there is no such thing as an infant” to underscore the importance of the mother-infant relationship. In nature, of course, there is not only the infant and the mother but also ongoing interactions between infant and mother. Current theories of infants' self-development vary in their emphasis on infants' capacities that reflect normative functioning (e.g., Neisser, 1988, 1991) and those that emphasize individual differences as a function of variability in infants' interactions with their mothers (e.g., Mahler, et al., 1975). Although infants' biological survival depends on caregivers' support, once this support is assumed within an average expectable environment, our thesis is that infants' sense of self and other is related to a number of diverse factors, including species characteristics, the development of infants' capacities, and characteristics of interactions between infants and mothers.