TY - JOUR
T1 - Attachment and the driving force of development
T2 - A critical discussion of empirical infant research
AU - Zeuthen, Katrine Egede
AU - Pedersen, Signe Holm
AU - Gammelgård, Judy
PY - 2010/12
Y1 - 2010/12
N2 - Empirical infant research has led to an enormous expansion of our knowledge of the psychological functions of the infant. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, it must be questioned whether this research has increased our knowledge of internal psychic life and helped answer the questions of what initiates and drives development. In the first part of this article, we argue that psychoanalysis must necessarily adopt a critical stance towards a scholarly ideal that rests on the positivist empirical tradition. Psychoanalysis has as its object unconscious processes that cannot be directly observed. In the following section, we take as our point of departure the project of attachment theory that Peter Fonagy and his colleagues have developed in an attempt to reconcile psychoanalysis with the empirical and experimental study of small children, and we demonstrate concretely the limitations of such a project vis-a-vis the exploration of the psychic reality of the child. Our line of reasoning continues to demonstrate how drive theory can be shaped so as to contain an object relations theoretical perspective - as has taken place in Jean Laplanche's reinterpretation of the theory of seduction - without abandoning the psychoanalytic theory of the drive and the unconscious.
AB - Empirical infant research has led to an enormous expansion of our knowledge of the psychological functions of the infant. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, it must be questioned whether this research has increased our knowledge of internal psychic life and helped answer the questions of what initiates and drives development. In the first part of this article, we argue that psychoanalysis must necessarily adopt a critical stance towards a scholarly ideal that rests on the positivist empirical tradition. Psychoanalysis has as its object unconscious processes that cannot be directly observed. In the following section, we take as our point of departure the project of attachment theory that Peter Fonagy and his colleagues have developed in an attempt to reconcile psychoanalysis with the empirical and experimental study of small children, and we demonstrate concretely the limitations of such a project vis-a-vis the exploration of the psychic reality of the child. Our line of reasoning continues to demonstrate how drive theory can be shaped so as to contain an object relations theoretical perspective - as has taken place in Jean Laplanche's reinterpretation of the theory of seduction - without abandoning the psychoanalytic theory of the drive and the unconscious.
U2 - 10.1080/0803706x.2010.497163
DO - 10.1080/0803706x.2010.497163
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0803-706X
VL - 19
SP - 230
EP - 239
JO - International Forum of Psychoanalysis
JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis
IS - 4
ER -