Content area
Full Text
Abstract: From absolute dependence at the beginning of life, there are gradual changes to relative dependence on the way to independence. In the event of the mother's failure or sudden death in the early stages, the process of development is distorted. This article deals with the loss of the mother in early childhood of two writers and how their mothers' deaths influence their life and work.
Keywords: family systems, human development, attachment
"There is no such thing as an infant...whenever one finds an infant one finds maternal care and without maternal care there would be no infant"
(Winnicott, 1960/1990, p. 39).
The mother is the first facilitating environment, the person responsible for providing the "holding," equipping, and enabling the feeling of self-realization. In Winnicott's view, in the initial absolute dependence stage, a good-enough mother is one who adapts herself to her baby's needs and can identify with him. This is a mother who is able to devote herself entirely, for a limited period, to safeguarding her baby's ability to continue living. She allows herself to be created by the baby, and the baby is able to experience the illusion of creation that later will serve as a source for a constant creative life. If at the very moment that the baby is hungry and anticipates the breast, the mother appears with the food, the baby then feels he has created the breast and experiences himself as one who has created the providing mother, "I just thought about her and she's here exactly as I imagined. I created her in the way I wanted" (Winnicott, 1956/1975, p. 42). Winnicott referred to the mother's heightened sensitive state as "primary maternal preoccupation."
In the second stage of development, relative dependence, the mother gradually reduces her level of adaptation in accord with the infant's needs. Only when the baby begins to experience the mother as a separate object and not as part of his fantasy, can she then expose him gradually to the environment and to a level of frustration that he is able to bear. The baby can already wait a few minutes for food because he is aware of what is happening around him and is familiar with the noises that indicate the food will soon...