The development of different selves on the basis of leading maternal affects: Metatheoretical, clinical and technical reflections

Abstract

In this article I will discuss, departing from the usual disintegration of the newborn’s experiences, how one can model the integration of different forms of memory, sensory channels, and mode of representation of these early experiences. Based on the inborn semiotics of the affect system, I pursue the idea that the affect expression of the mother comprises the organizational nucleus of the child’s future personality, and that the representational format of the very young child comprises the mother’s faces and vocalizations. In the aftermath of parental projections, the baby is confronted with plenty of dominant affect expressions, for example contempt, disgust, anger, and fear. These act in contrast to happiness in terms of guiding the affect expression of secure attachment. Following Tomkins, I call these interaction schemes “emotional scripts” and demonstrate that they are carried on into adulthood. Here I launch and discuss four clinical vignettes that can be characterized as being governed by such an “emotional script.” I try to show that these scripts can be redrafted if the governing affect can be exchanged with a different one. These considerations have led to a revised form of the procedure called “splitting.” In addition, implications for treatment techniques are depicted.

Key words:

• integration
• semiotic function of affect expression
• primary affects
• reduction in cathexis
• treatment technique
• low structural level
• developmental psychology
• child development

Notes

1 A similar argument has been put forward by Kernberg (2001), who claims the existence of “peak affect states” of either maximum distress or pleasure during which the already existing differentiation between self and object dissolves into symbiotic fantasies of merger. The act of merging is here, however, something regressive, which keeps the either bad or good parts of the object representation separated from one another by an act called “splitting,” which I will discuss later.

2 It could be assumed that the robbery of the eyes in the dream was an attempt to portray the blindness of the mother, who had no eyes for seeing the child as a separate being. Against this background, the unworthy, unseen child is the true self, the nonexistent vanishing point of a blind mother.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rainer Krause

Prof. Dr. phil. Rainer Krause is the former head of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of the University of the Saarland, and professor at the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Germany. He is also a training analyst of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG) and of the International Psychoanalytic Association.