The Significance of the Emergence of Language and Symbol in the Development of the Young Infant (original) (raw)
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ABSTRACT Conventional science, a primary influence in childbirth and medical practice, child psychology, nurturing and developmental theories, and education, often ignores the significance of the primal period surrounding birth and its life- long imprinting on the infant. Instead, the mainstream scientific paradigm emphasizes genetic determinism and often disregards research that demonstrates that environment, including childbirth and nurturing practices, may actually influence gene expression. In addition, the knowledge that young children are capable of deeply intuitive, psychic, and spiritual experiences continues to be dismissed, minimized, or ignored by modern Western culture. Research, theories, and case studies from several disciplines, including psychology, transpersonal psychology, consciousness studies, anthropology, biology, and physics challenge a limited and mechanistic view of the capabilities of fetuses, newborns, and young children and describe the participatory dynamics natural to children. This dissertation argues that invasive and violating practices, especially during the deep imprinting process surrounding birth, results in negative iv consequences not only for children, but also for the global human family and the natural world. This study asserts that children's feelings of neglect and fear or their feelings of nurturance and love activate powerful field dynamics and influence the contents of consciousness. The recognition of the actual, impressive capabilities of fetuses, newborns, and young children, and appropriate responses to the whole child, may result in a shift from humanity’s present regressive evolutionary trajectory to a progressive transformation of consciousness.
How human infants deal with symbol grounding
Interaction Studies, 2007
Taking a distributed view of language, this paper naturalizes symbol grounding. Learning to talk is traced to — not categorizing speech sounds — but events that shape the rise of human-style autonomy. On the extended symbol hypothesis, this happens as babies integrate micro-activity with slow and deliberate adult action. As they discover social norms, intrinsic motive formation enables them to reshape co-action. Because infants link affect to contingencies, dyads develop norm-referenced routines. Over time, infant doings become analysis amenable. The caregiver of a nine-month-old may, for example, prompt the baby to fetch objects. Once she concludes that the baby uses ‘words’ to understand what she says, the infant can use this belief in orienting to more abstract contingencies. New cognitive powers will develop as the baby learns to act in ways that are consistent with a caregiver’s false belief that her baby uses ‘words.’
An empirical-phenomenological critique of the social construction of infancy
Human Studies, 1996
Developmental and clinical psychological findings on infancy over the past twenty years and more refute in striking ways both Piaget's and Lacan's negative characterizations of infants. Piaget's thesis is that the infant has an undifferentiated sense of self; Lacan's thesis is that the infant is no more than a fragmentedpieceofgoods-acorps morcelk. Through an examination of recent and notable analyses of infancy by infant psychiatrist Daniel Stem, this paper highlights important features within the radically different accounts. In particular, it examines Stem' s account of self-agency-a facet of"the core self." In doing so, the paper brings to light corporeal matters of fact and shows how recent developmental-clinical data on infants accord with facets of bodily life described by Husserl. The paper contrasts these corporeal matters of fact and facets of bodily life with Piaget's and Lacan's notion of an infant as incompetent and deficient. On the basis of its empiricalphenomenological findings, the paper underscores the need to recognize the richness of nonverbal life and to give movement and the tactile-kinesthetic body their conceptual due.
The psychic envelopes in psychoanalytic theories of infancy
Frontiers in Psychology, 2014
This paper aims to review the topic of psychic envelopes and to sketch the main outlines of this concept in infancy. We first explore the origins of the concept in Freud's "protective shield" and then its development in adult psychoanalysis before going on to see how this fits in infancy with post-Bionian psychoanalysis and development. Four central notions guide this review: (1) Freud's "protective shield" describes a barrier to protect the psychic apparatus against potentially overflowing trauma. It is a core notion which highlights a serious clinical challenge for patients for whom the shield is damaged or faulty: the risk of confusion of borders between the internal/external world, conscious/unconscious, mind/body, or self-conservation/sexuality. (2) Anzieu's "Skin-Ego" is defined by the different senses of the body. The different layers of experienced sensation, of this body-ego, go on to form the psychic envelope. This theory contributes to our understanding of how early trauma, due to the failures of maternal care, can continue to have an impact in adult life. (3) Bick's "psychic skin" establishes the concept in relation to infancy. The mother's containing functions allow a first psychic skin to develop, which then defines an infant's psychic space and affords the infant a degree of self-containment. Houzel then conceptualized this process as a stabilization of drive forces. (4) Stern's "narrative envelope" derives from the intersection between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. It gives us another way to conceptualize the development of pre-verbal communication. It may also pave the way for a finer distinction of different types of envelopes. Ultimately, in this review we find that psychic envelopes in infancy can be viewed from four different perspectives (economic, topographical, dynamic, and genetic) and recommend further investigation.
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1996
This paper reviews and evaluates various theories of the origins of theory of mind in infancy. In what a theory of mind consists is first considered. It is argued that any theory of mind has t w o important features. Firstly, a theory of mind recognizes, at least, the existence of psychological relations between agents and objects, including some relations which involve 'action at a distance'. Secondly, in a theory of mind, self and other are equivalent in that both can act equally as agents of psychological relations. Any theory of the development of theory of mind must explicate h o w it is possible t o acquire an understanding of these t w o features. With this requirement in mind, four main types of recent theories are considered -modularity theories, Piagetian theories, matching theories, and intersubjectivity theories. While n o decision is made amongst these theories, suggestions for further improvement in theorizing o n this topic are presented.
As Infant Is Born into Language
In a strange, but real, sense, language “kills” the mother for the infant. The undifferentiated unity with mother is broken. The experience of the “languaged mother” is not the same as what was sensed in the original mother-me.
Introduction: The Child's Psyche and the Nature of its Experience
British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1987
No-one committed to the value of a psychodynamic perspective for understanding human behaviour would dispute that one essential tenet of this approach is that a developmental perspective can give valuable insight into the understanding of human behaviour. The child, nay indeed the infant, is the father of the man. It is a perspective which stresses that complex and elaborate forms of human behaviour and motivation can be interpreted as the elaboration of more primitive or infantile drives and conflicts. Our conception of the infant's nature, his drives, his needs, his innate potentialities, and how they will be affected or structured by the environment that may meet or fail to meet his requirements, will affect and colour our later understanding of 'the transference in the analytic situation. We may differ about the drives we attribute to the neonate: for example, in our views about the death instinct or whether envy is a primary or secondary phenomenon. Some, like Balint, Fairbairn, Winnicott or Kohut, may regard these drives as secondary products arising from, and exacerbated by, an environmental situation in which there was a traumatising lack of fit between the child and his significant others. We may differ in the significance we attribute to the role of the relationship with the primary caretaker and how this relationship affects the intrapsychic development of the individual. Some will stress the role of the mother as a transformational object of primitive infantile phantasies inasmuch as she can hold and contain them. But does she also function as a stimulator? Do experiences of actual seductiveness at the hands of the mother affect the intrapsychic development of her child? These differences may affect our views of the nature of the relationship between phantasy and reality. When Freud stressed that the main factors in the aetiology of hysteria arose from unconscious phantasy originating from internal sexual drives rather than actual seduction, did he direct our attention away from external reality? These differences will affect how we account for the fact that some individuals have failed in terms of the sublimation and transformation of their pregenital and aggressive drives. Do we explain this in terms of intra-psychic factors, as essentially an internal failure in the taming of the drives, or do we think that a relevant explanatory variable might be the actual relationship with the parents which perhaps failed to provide theh olding' environment necessary for the transformation of the drives? We may differ in the degree to which we understand psychopathology in terms of fixations due to instinctual conflict, or of developmental arrests due to environmental deficit. If we adopt a position regarding unmet needs, what are the mutative factors of the analytic situation? Is it purely the achievement of insight through interpretation of the transference, or are there elements of a corrective experience provided by the analyst's empathic mirroring which are necessary for the tranformation of some narcissistic configurations as Kohut (1971) argues?