Bearing a beautiful daughter: conflicting identifications for a new mother and for the observer

Abstract

This paper describes a particular aspect of an infant observation which highlights Meltzer's theory of the aesthetic conflict and his ideas concerning the overwhelming nature of the aesthetic impact, not only for the mother in her identification with her infant, but also for the observer in witnessing the ‘beauty of mother and her daughter's world’. The paper gives a detailed account of an infant observation in which the more ordinary and imaginative relationship between mother and her infant daughter was fleetingly interrupted by absences in the mother's ongoing attentive link with her infant. These moments are explored through the observer's experience of being disorientated and disappointed. The role of the observer and seminar group is considered as facilitating an essential containing function for the split off and projected aspects of the mother and shows an increasing capacity to manage her envy and jealousy through the course of the observation.

Keywords:

• infant observation
• containment
• aesthetic conflict
• attunement
• projective identification
• parent-infant dyad

Notes

1. As a requirement of the British Psychoanalytic Association (BPA) psychoanalytic training.

2. For reasons of confidentiality all names have been changed.

3. Esther Bick suggest that the young infant experiences the parts of his personality as having no binding force between themselves, but as being held passively together, in a precarious way by a psychic skin, equated with the physical skin. The infant searches for the optimal nipple in the mouth containing function and dependent upon the mother to provide this containing function for him.

4. Symington (1985) suggests that if the mother is absent or present but emotionally unable to contain the baby's distress, the baby has to resort to ways of holding himself together. He is driven to act in order to survive.

5. Esmee's touching of Mother's hand during feeding time may also serve as a transition between an early sense of omnipotence whereby an infant is under the illusionary impression that he made the food magically appear and the later objective perception of reality that mother provides the food. She creates an intermediate space between illusion and reality where she creatively takes a part in this process.