David and Goliath: What If He Loses?

ABSTRACT

Infant’s volition has not been explored in healthy development. Our research conducted on the environmental response to infant’s initiatives (Hoffmann, Popbla, and Duhalde, 1998) shows that maternal attitude has a direct correlation with successful development of initiatives in infants aged 4 to 12 months, having implications for the capacities of infants to unfold as much as endowments allow. The opposite also is true. Infants who are more thwarted in the development of their potential initiatives show greater reactivity and conflict in early relationships with the caregiver, impacting the development of a healthy self. These claims will be discussed with proposals made in recent decades by some authors who have focused on the coming together of a self in the first year of life. The ramifications of this early start in one’s life can be credited to Lou Sander, whom we honor in this issue. Sander was gifted with a capacity to see with a “relational eye” and to state it in everyday language, while simultaneously using very sophisticated inventions to validate his assumptions. This work has made it possible to solve the riddle of the David and Goliath story that is part of the miracle of life over death, of love over hate, of health over sickness, which makes (most) mothers able to become good enough or whatever defines a progressive meeting between the infant’s doings with the doings of mothers.

Notes

¹ Robert Tyson’s introduction is a wonderful addition to our thinking about Lou Sander’s paper (1983). J. D. Benjamin’s reference calls to our attention to a maturational crisis as early as the third or fourth week of development, connecting it with Sander´s concept of open spaces. Sander correlates these open spaces, with Winnicott´s concept of the intermediate space. We will come back to this in the Discussion, but here I say that already in 1961 (57 years ago) there is the beginning of a thought about the origins of initiative and the correlation with creativity in Sanders explanation of this maturational crisis.

² All emphasis is mine.

³ Rosine Debray in our discussion of these issues mentioned her own observations of babies starving to death out of a reaction to a particular maternal set of behaviors.

⁴ For fluidity in reading, from now on the infant will be referred to as she only.

⁵ Perhaps today this sounds bizarre, but back in 1980 and in a Kleinian Province it was part of the doctrine.

⁶ Lou Sander had started to speak about Initiative quite early. As I expand on this, I mention his work published in 1976 (1976). But the fact is that this chapter is a reprint from a much earlier paper cited as the Journal of the Academy, 1:141–166, 1962 (1976). Probably a reference to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, as the book edited by him in cooperation, is Monograph N° 2 of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Therefore, these concepts where formulated 56 years ago; a long time.

⁷ All emphasis is mine.

⁸ This paper, although only published in 1990, had been written in the ‘70s, as the Editor mentions.

⁹ From my medical praxis, I learned how often this same word, mother, comes to the lips of the dying person.

¹⁰ Again, emphasis mine.

¹¹ Sander added this piece of information while discussing the quoted paper at a meeting (J. Nahum, personal communication, July, 1995).

¹² Even so, we have video clips showing that it is not always the infant that ends up crying and throwing a tantrum because of being overpowered.

¹³ Emphasis in the original.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. Miguel Hoffmann

J. Miguel Hoffmann, M.D., is full member of the IPA (International Psycho-Analytic Association), part time in clinical practice. Honorary President of the Argentine Branch of WAIMH, serving on the WAIMH Board 1989–2000. For 25 years Director of a Center for Research and Prevention in Early Childhood, working for 10 years (2006–2015) full time in the Community in preventive practices, both with Government and NGOs.