I wish to deal with the confusion that I think may arise through an acceptance of the word ‘deep’ as synonymous with the word ‘early’. I have published two contributions specifically in the field of direct observation; these concern (a) the infant's way of coming to terms with an object (Winnicott, 1941), and (b) the use of objects and phenomena during the time of the infant's transition from a purely subjective life to the next stage (Winnicott, 1951).
Each of these will provide useful material for the examination of my main thesis, which is that ‘deep’ in the analytic sense is not the same as ‘early’ in the sense of infant development.
The Observation of Infants in a Set Situation
(I will call this Action Research, to give it modern dress and to link it with Kris.)
It is possible to see three main stages in the approach of an infant to an object (one presented in a formal way, as described).
First
Stage initial reflex grasp; withdrawal;
tension covering renewed voluntary grasp and slow passage of object to mouth.
Here the mouth becomes suffused, saliva flows. Second
Stage
Mouthing of the object;
carefree use of the object in experimental exploration, in play and as something with which to feed others.
Here the object drops by mistake. Let us assume that it is picked up and returned to the infant. Third
Stage Riddance.
In considering these matters with reference to an example one —————————————
1 Read at the 20th International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Paris, July 1957, and first published (in French) in the Revue française de Psychanalyse, 22, pp. 205-11.
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immediately needs to be given the age of the infant. Typical is eleven months. At thirteen and fourteen months infants have developed so many other interests that the main issue is likely to be obscured.
At ten months or nine months most infants will pass through the phases normally, though the younger they are the more they need some measure of that subtle co-operation which sensitive mothers can give, which supports yet does not dominate. It is not common in my experience for a six-months-old baby to show clearly the whole physical performance. Immaturity at that age is such that it is an achievement that the object has been grasped and held, and perhaps mouthed. Direct observation shows that the baby must have a physical and psychological maturity of a certain degree before being able to enjoy the full emotional experience.
When these phenomena appear in psycho-analysis, whether in a session or in a phase lasting days or weeks, it is not possible for the analyst to date what is observed or deduced. For the analyst who reviews the material presented in analysis it may seem as if the phenomena I have described were applicable to the patient's early infancy, even to the first weeks and days. This material may appear in the analysis mixed up with details that do actually belong to earliest infancy, even to the post- birth state. This the analyst must learn to allow for. Nevertheless it is in analysis that the full significance of the infant's play becomes recognized, play which indicates the whole of the fantasy of incorporation and elimination, and of the growth of the personality through imaginative eating. Transitional Objects and Phenomena
In the simplest case, a normal baby adopts a piece of cloth or a napkin and becomes addicted to it, and the date is perhaps six months to a year or later. Examination of this phenomenon in analytic work makes it possible for us to refer to the capacity for symbol formation in terms of the use of a transitional object. In analytic work, however, it would seem possible to allow these ideas to apply
in earliest infancy, in rudimentary form. Yet the fact remains that there is an age before which the transitional object cannot exist, on account of the immaturity of the infant. Also, animals have transitional objects. Even the thumb-sucking of earliest infancy cannot have the significance for the infant at birth that it can have for the infant of a few months, and certainly not the whole of the significance that compulsive thumb-sucking has for a psychotic child of ten years.
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Deep is not synonymous with early, because an infant needs a degree of maturity before becoming gradually able to be deep. This is obvious, almost trite, yet I think it has not been given sufficient attention.
At this point it would be helpful if I could define the word ‘deep’. James Strachey (1934), faced with this same problem, wrote:
The ambiguity of the term, (‘deep’ interpretation) however, need not bother us. It describes, no doubt, the interpretation of material which is either genetically early and historically distant from the patient's actual experience or which is under an especially heavy weight of repression— material, in any case, which is in the normal course of things exceedingly inaccessible to his ego and remote from it.
He seems to accept the words as synonymous.
On looking into the matter we see that ‘deep’ is a matter of variable usage and ‘early’ is a matter of fact; which makes a comparison of the two difficult and of temporary significance. It is deeper to refer to infant-mother relationships than to triangular relationships, to refer to internal persecutory anxiety than to refer to the sense of external persecution; splitting mechanisms, disintegration, an incapacity to make contact, seem to me to be deeper than is anxiety in a relationship.
I think that when we use the word ‘deep’ we always imply deep in the patient's unconscious fantasy or psychic reality; that is to say, the patient's mind and imagination are involved.
In the course of his ‘Opening Remarks on Psychoanalytic Child Psychology’ Kris (1951) remarked: ‘By extrapolating from psychotic mechanism to early childhood…’ He was examining critically the relationship between the depth of interpretation in analyses and the earliness of the applicability of psychotic mechanisms to infant psychology. In our analytic work, with the help of our developing concepts, we get deeper and deeper. We are able to see and to use transference phenomena that relate to deeper and deeper elements in the emotional development of our patients. To some extent ‘deeper and deeper’ does of course imply ‘earlier and earlier’, but only to a limited extent. We have to take into account the fact that in our analytic patients there has been a fusion of early with later elements.
We have become accustomed to formulating ideas about childhood through what we find in analysis. This came from the work of Freud himself. When applying Freud's work on the origin of psycho-neuroses to the psychology of the child at the toddler age we were not involved in much difficulty, although even here
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psycho-analysts were liable to say things which were true in analysis and yet untrue when applied in a crude way to the psychology of childhood.
As we use ideas that take us deeper we take much more of a risk when we apply what we find to the psychology of infancy. Let us consider the Klein concept that is referred to under the title ‘the depressive position in emotional development’. It goes deeper, in one sense, and also earlier. Study
of ego development would make us unable to accept so complex a matter as the depressive position in an infant younger than six months, and indeed it would be safer to give a later date. If we found references to the depressive position as something that might be found in infants of a few weeks, this would be absurd. What is called by Melanie Klein the ‘paranoid position’, however, is surely a much more crude thing, almost a matter of talion, and could be perhaps found before integration is a fact. History-taking in the paediatric clinic would indicate that the expectation of retaliation can date from the first days of life. I would therefore refer to the paranoid position as early rather than deep.
As for splitting mechanisms, are these a matter of early or of deep psychology? I suggest that it is important to know the answer because the answer would indicate the ego development and the part played by the mother. We can refer to what is deep as part of the infant, but when we refer to what is early we must take into account the ego-supportive environment that is an important feature at the early stages of extreme dependence.
Now, the direct observer of infants must be prepared to allow the analyst to formulate ideas about very early infancy, ideas which may be psychically true and yet which cannot be demonstrated; indeed it may be possible sometimes by direct observation to prove that what has been found in analysis could not in fact exist at the time claimed because of the limitations imposed by immaturity. What is found repeatedly in analysis is not annulled by being proved to be wrong through direct observation. Direct observation only proves that the patients have been antedating certain phenomena and therefore giving the analyst the impression that things were happening at an age when they could not have happened.
Certain concepts ring true from my point of view when I am doing analysis, and yet ring false when I am looking at infants in my clinic. Kris (1951) goes on to say: ‘Observations…carried out in a large number of setups confirmed the view of those who stressed the importance of the child's concrete environment for its development.’ There is a subtle way in which the concrete
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environment may be underrated by many analysts who do nevertheless carefully state that they know and allow for the environmental factor. It is very difficult to get at the bone of contention, yet in a discussion like this we must try to get to it. If deeper and deeper as formulated through analytic work meant earlier and earlier, then it would be necessary to assume that the immature infant of a few weeks could be aware of the environment. We know, however, that the infant is not aware of the environment as environment, especially when the environment is good or good-enough. The environment induces reactions indeed when it fails in some important respect, but what we call a good environment is something which is taken for granted. The infant in the early stages has no knowledge of the environment, knowledge, that is, which could be brought forward and presented as material in analysis. The conception of the environmental has to be added by the analyst.
When an analyst takes us deeper in the understanding of the material presented by the analytic patient, it is not enough for that analyst to state that the external factor is recognized as having its importance. If a formulation of a complete child psychology is being made, one that can be tested by direct observation, the analyst must imaginatively clothe the earliest material presented by the patient with the environment, the environment that is implied but which the patient cannot give in analysis because of never having been aware of it. I have illustrated this in my published case description in which the patient had the feeling of being curled up and revolving, in a moment of withdrawal, and I interpreted a medium which was implied but which could not be reported. There is no emotional or physical survival of an infant minus environment. To start with, minus
environment the infant would fall infinitely. The infant who is held or who is lying in a cot is not aware of being preserved from infinitely falling. A slight failure of holding, however, brings to the infant a sensation of infinite falling. In analysis a patient may report a sense of falling, dating from
earliest days, but can never report being held at this early stage of development.
Deeper and deeper takes us to the instinctual roots of the individual, but this gives no indication of ordinary dependence and dependence which has left no trace on the individual, although these characterize early life.
I would suggest that if this essential difference between depth and earliness be recognized it may be easier for direct observers and analysts to come to terms with each other. It will always be the direct observers who are telling the analysts that they have
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made too early an application of their theories. The analysts will continue to tell the direct observers that there is much more in human nature than can be observed directly. In a way there is no
difficulty here except a series of interesting theoretical points for discussion. In practice, however, there are certain ways in which it is very important for us to know what is and what is not
applicable to earliest infancy.
Psycho-analysis has much to learn from those who make direct observations of infants, and of mothers and infants together, and of small children in the environment in which they naturally live. Also direct observation is not able of itself to construct a psychology of early infancy. By constantly co-operating analysts and direct observers may be able to correlate what is deep in analysis with what is early in infant development.
In two words: a human infant must travel some distance from early in order to have the maturity to be deep.
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