Emde - Changing Models of Infancy and The Nature of Early Development

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Changing Models Of Infancy And The Nature Of Early Development:

Remodeling The Foundation
Robert N. Emde
J Am Psychoanal Assoc 1981 29: 179
DOI: 10.1177/000306518102900110
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CHANGING MODELS O F
INFANCY AND T H E
NATURE O F EARLY
N. EMDE,M.D.
ROBERT
DEVELOPMENT:
REMODELING THE
FOUNDATION
S OhlE TIhlE AGO AN IhlAGE OF shaking ofthe foundationsWas

conjured up from the prophet Isaiah in a book concerned
about changing values in our post-atomic bomb era (Tillich,
1948). The image returns as I consider the books to be discussed.
Psychoanalysis has undergone its own foundation shaking. It
seems to me the first shaking was inadvertently begun by David
Rapaport, who, in a tour &force, systematized psychoanalytic
metapsychology using the economic theory as a keystone
(Rapaport, 1959). After his death, Rapaports former students
and colleagues pursued his disciplined scholarship and, on both
evidential and logical grounds, began questioning fundamental
assumptions of the economic theory and then those of meta-
psychology in general (Holt, 1967). Following this questioning,
the entire edifice of psychoanalytic metapsychology has been
regarded by some critics as weak or outmoded (see Gill and
Holtzman, 1976). Some have advocated a modification of
theory. Others have advocated replacement by a personal
Dr. Emde is supported by Research Scientist Award #5 KO2 MH 36808 and

NIMH Project Grant #2 R 0 1 MH 22803.
A modified version of this essay was presented to the Topeka Psychoanalytic
Society.
179

180 BOOK SECTION
psychology or by a less abstract clinical theory. Still others (in-

cluding, I would assume, the majority of practicing analysts)
have taken the position that most of the structure of meta-
psychology is useful and should be maintained. We are im-
mersed in lively debate.
Now some would say there is another shaking of the foun-
dations. Recent research in developmental psychology has led to
a questioning of some of our fundamental assumptions about de-
velopmental continuities from infancy to afterwards. It also has
led to a questioning of the special role of early developmental ex-
perience. Clearly, research perspectives are changing. Within
psychoanalysis, a new debate is beginning. Will the structure of
our genetic theory or our developmental orientation be found
weak? Will we see some advocates for replacement, others for
modification, and still others for maintenance? M y hope is that
the reader of this essay will begin to shape an informed opinion.
Let me tell you my strategy. T h e six books I have chosen
for review are selected as containing some of the better thinking
from the recent developmental psychology of infancy. They are
also selected because they allow us a glimpse of changing views
of the infant and of the questions about early experience and
about continuities. As a matter of style, I will leave behind the
destructive imagery of Isaiah (for I in no way plan a critical
exegesis of psychoanalytic developmental theory) and I will use
instead the constructive imagery of modeling. I confess in
working as both analyst and infant psychologist, I feel op-
timistic about new models that can be serviceable in both job
areas. Besides, I much prefer modeling and the playful
metaphor it suggests to the ponderousness of the ancient proph-
et. My plan is to review each volume individually, and to in-
dicate changing research models as we go along. Following this,
I will offer a critical summary along with challenges for
psychoanalytic thinking.
R. Q. Bell H L . V. Harppr. CHILD EFFECTS ON ADULTS. New York: Erlbaum

(Division of Wiley), 1977.
A . Ai. CLarke @ A . D. B. Clarke. EARLY EXPEIRENCE: MYTH AND EVI-
DENCE. London: Open Books, 1976.

CHANGING hfODELS OF INFANCY 181
A . C h k - S h d . CHILDCAREINTHEFAM1LY:AREVIEWOFRESEARCHAND
SOLMEPROPOSITIONS FOR POLICY. New York: Academic Press, 1977.
J. Kupn, R. B. Keursly, UP.R. Zehzo. INFANCY: ITS PLACE IN HUMAN DE-
VELOPMENT. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978.
J. Os&y, Ed. HANDBOOK OF INFANT DEVELOPMENT. New York: Wiley,
1979.
A . SameroA Ed. ORGANIZATION AND STABILITY OF NEWBORN BE-
HAVIOR. Monogr. Society for Research in Child Development, 43 (5-6), 1978.
CHILDCAREI N THE FAMILY:A REVIEW OF RESEARCHAND SOME

PROPOSITIONS A. Clarke-Stewart.
FOR POLICY.
Our entry into the developmental psychology of infancy is pro-

vided by this review of recent research. In many ways this small
volume is extraordinary. Imagine yourself recently out of
graduate school and asked by the Carnegie Council on Children
to prepare a review about what had been learned about children
and families and to come up with recommendations for policy
makers. I would have thought it an impossible task. Yet the
results by Clarke-Stewart, while obviously not going into any
area in depth, are readable, balanced, and somehow manage to
reflect the spirit and complexity of much of recent thinking.
For this essay, the book offers us a broad overview of
research before we dig into the finer-grained subtleties of chang-
ing models and questions of developmental continuities. The
risk is that the psychoanalytic reader may find some of the
generalizations too superficial. But we should remember: we
are offered a bird's eye-view of a field which can indicate
features and directions; from this we can gain a sense of ac-
complishments and limitations. It would obviously not be satis-
fying to leave things there.
The book is divided into two sections, the first containing a
review of research and the second listing propositions for policy
which follow from that review. In terms of the review, there are
several overall impressions. First, the amount of space devoted
to the different age periods is revealing. There is an equivalent
amount of space devoted to infancy and to childhood (3-9
years). Further, within infancy, the periods from birth to 6

182 BOOK SECTION
months and from 6 months to 3 years occupy equal space. It

would seem this distribution of space reflects the intensity of
research efforts in infancy, especially early infancy, as com-
pared with the other ages of childhood. Second, one is im-
pressed by complexity in development and the importance of
context. No single caretaking variable is associated with an in-
variant effect on children. A third impression concerns the
middle-class orientation of the research enterprise, both in
terms of values guiding research goals and subjects included for
study. Related to this is the overemphasis on the study of in-
tellectual development as compared with social-emotional
development-but one gathers this may be changing. A few il-
lustrations may add substance to the latter point.
The major value our society places on intellectual develop-
ment is reflected in the vast number of studies of environmental
correlates of early I.Q. But research suggests that the most
valuable contributions to the infants intellectual experience oc-
cur as the result of interactions with another person who
teaches, shares, and talks with the child. Further, competence
in cognitive development seems most related to a caregivers
continuing contingent responsiveness; presumably this works
by increasing the childs motivation to enter new situations
wherein he anticipates his behavior will have predictable and
positive consequences. In short, studies have demonstrated that
a childs exploration and lack of anxiety in new places is en-
hanced by an interesting environment and by the presence of a
nonrestrictive caregiver with whom there has been consistent
interaction. Thus far, no surprises for the psychoanalyst.
The review also highlights that after three months the in-
fants intellectual and social-emotional development is greatly
influenced by the way parents behave. This may be most ob-
vious in early language development where the amount and
variety of speech in face-to-face interaction with an adult clearly
influences early language. In terms of intellectual development,
the time parent and child merely spend together in routine
caretaking does not seem related to the childs competence. In-

CHANGING MODELS OF INFANCY 183
stead, mutual interaction of the pair which is stimulating, con-

tingent, and encourages play and exploration, is likely to lead to
a child who is creative, competent, and who will do well in
school.
According to the author, an emergimg theme of current
research seems to be the increasing research appreciation of
complexity in the form of bidirectionality of effects. In addi-
tion to direct effects from caregivers, there is increasing
evidence that the infants innate characteristics have important
effects in determining his immediate interpersonal environment
as well as the effect of that environment on his development. It
is not possible to describe optimal care without identifying the
characteristics of the child.
The second part of the book, concerned with formulating
propositions for social policy, begins with several caveats. The
author emphasizes that research tells us about relationships
rather than causes, that it refers to some people and not all peo-
ple, that it is embedded in middle-class white values of the
predominant society, and that it tells us about how things are
and not how they should be. Rather than make recommenda-
tions, therefore, 15 propositions for child care policy are offered
as possible guidelines.
Happily the first two propositions deal with the importance
of variety. First, we need to accommodate to differences in age,
needs, and cultural values when making policies for child care.
We know children develop better in environments that match
their abilities and needs, and that good caregiving accom-
modates to what is appropriate for the childs developmental
level. Any policy should therefore be complex and should not be
directed by a single recommendation. Second, we should foster
environments that promote competence, with competence
defined broadly so as to include emotional and social qualities as
well as cognitive skills. In this vein, the author is critical of our
tendency to be concerned with long-range outcomes of pro-
grams without considering programs that would make children
happier. Since long-term outcomes are uncertain, we should

184 BOOK SECTION
treat childhood as an important period for its own sake, not

because the child is father to the man. . . (p. 83). Most of our
educational efforts, including compensatory education in the
1960s, have taken as their major goal enhancement of intellec-
tual development. But it must be concluded that this narrow
range seems inappropriate. The development of coping
strategies, of language, of social relations, and emotional
strengths are worthy of more emphasis. The same can be said
for assisting children in developing the capacity for sharing, for
trusting, for expressing deep feelings and a commitment to
other people. In the authors words: In addition to these social
qualities, we would also desire for children an inner sense of
identity, personal wholeness, self-worth, and confidence- a
balance between social and selfish qualities (p. 84). The notion
of an overall general competence includes social behavior and
sensitivity.
The next propositions have to do with the components of
care. Adult caregiving should provide children with stimulation
that is appropriate, that has variety, and that contains affection.
An attempt is then made to spell out the parameters of stimula-
tion for optimal caregiving: these are seen to include variety
and appropriateness as well as amount, and emotional
availability as well as general availability. In training child-care
workers there should be opportunities for observing ex-
perienced caregivers interacting with children since these
desirable qualities of stimulation cannot be learned from books
but need to be modeled. Another proposition, singled out for
special emphasis, is that the quantity of child care should not be
equated with quality of care. A certain quantity of caregiving is
necessary, but it is not a sufficient condition for optimal
development.
Another proposition has to do with the promotion of con-
tinuity in child care. Consistency, stability, and predictability of
parental behavior is important. Whereas research shows that
variety enhances development, conflict between caregivers
should be minimized. Parents and other caregivers need to

CHANGING hlODELS O F INFANCY 185
communicate with each other concerning their values and

behavior toward their children. This also means that parents
need to participate in early education programs and that consis-
tent.employees should be used in day care. It is also stated that
childrens need for stability and continuity is one reason that
the family has provided an optimal environment for raising
children -since a family ideally constitutes a lifelong network of
committed and concerned relatives. . . .From this perspective it
makes sense to recommend counseling services for families in
marital conflict in order to prevent unnecessary divorce (pp.
89-90).
Another proposition has to do with the physical environ-
ment. Variety and responsiveness of objects are more important
than quantity of objects or toys. The most beneficial kind of
play object is the one provided by the mother or other caregiver
when she participates with the child at an appropriate level of
complexity for his ability.
Other propositions have to do with the family as an en-
vironment. It is recommended that the child be helped to
develop a secure attachment to the parents with increasing op-
portunities to interact with other adults and children as he gets
older. Another states that policy should promote parental at-
tachment to babies from the beginning in terms of enhancing
attitudes about positive child care and opportunities for emo-
tional attachments. Other propositions have to do with the
desirability of parental support services for mothers and fathers,
including education programs and a wide variety of day care ar-
rangements for working mothers. Finally, adoption should be
encouraged rather than foster care, and policy should support
individual family options whenever possible.
The authors concluding remarks highlight the selectivity
of our research knowledge related to child care. This knowledge
is essentially of one group of caregivers-mothers who were in
intact, nuclear middle-class families during the 1950s ~ O Sand
,
70s. Now, fathers roles are changing and more mothers are
working. There are changing environments. Further, in much

186 BOOK SECTION
research, group differences tend to hide individual gains and

losses; we need more longitudinal research to understand the
meaning of individual development. Above all, we need to at-
tend to more than intellectual competence which has so preoc-
cupied the developmental psychology of the past.
I think the psychoanalyst is apt to be left with a very
different view of developmental psychology after reading this
book. The behaviorist domination of the field is clearly gone.
Interdisciplinary activity, especially in infancy, is evident and
there is increasing concern that variables of interest go beyond
the cognitive and perceptual domains. More and more research
is including the emotional and social domains and their relevant
contexts in family and environment. Simplistic generalizations
are frowned upon, and there is interest in the individual chang-
ing over time as well as in group data. Isolated laboratory
studies which presume that development is mechanistic and
linear are becoming less common. The infant and young child
are viewed increasingly as active participants in their own en-
vironment, not as passively shaped by events. With respect to
the interpersonal environment, there is increasing appreciation
of the bidirectionalityof effects. The next book brings us
directly to a consideration of these effects and to a view of the in-
fant that highlights an active organizing tendency.
CHILD
EFFECTS R. Q Bell and L. % Harper.
ON ADULTS.
This book reviews the research that demonstrates the effect in-
fants have on their caregivers in the socialization process. The
title of the book is somewhat misleading, since the research
covered is both for man (written by Bell) and for other mam-
mals (written by Harper). Further, the bulk of the work on
humans refers to infancy.
The authors state their book is devoted to the other side
of child rearing, namely, the way in which parents and other
caregivers are molded by the children they are trying to rear.
Up until recently the research literature on child rearing has

been dominated by effects of adults on children; the authors in-

tend to promote a bidirectional view by redressing the balance.
The authors systematically examine research strategies that can
isolate child effects from adult effects, and review the evidence for
child effects. The chapters on animals offer a compelling
background for their argument that we need to look more at how
parents fit in with their young in addition to how the young fit in
with their parents. The matter is stated cogently: students of
human development have been late at getting the basic message
of biology-namely, that we adults are intricately fitted to our
young, just as they are to us. We become aware of this reciprocal
relation of parental and filial behaviors when we try to rear the
young of other species, such as chimpanzees (p. xi).
The book begins with an historical introduction from
Greek times to the twentieth century. In evaluating the
material, one has to remember that the emphasis in early child
rearing, prior to the medical advances of this century, was
predominantly on survival rather than psychological develop-
ment. The influence of the Enlightenment can be understood in
the writings of Locke and Rousseau who viewed children for
their own sake as well as for the potential which could be
achieved by proper training. But the political and social
philosophy that was fueled by the Enlightenment stressed egali-
tarianism. The nature of training was emphasized in such a way
that it was difficult to appreciate the nature of the child in the
developmental process. It goes without saying that the Protes-
tant ethic and Victorianism added to the rigidity of this train-
ing.
Bell, who originally trained as a clinical psychologist, has a
marked appreciation of psychoanalytic contributions in this
history. He calls attention not only to Freuds placing early
childhood and individual drffe7ence.r in a central position in
psychoanalytic theory, but even more poignantly , to Freuds
recognition of the power oflhe childsfuntasy to modify redip rather
than submit to it passively, Thus Freud was a harbinger of
Piaget, the acknowledged psychological genius of current times

188 BOOK SECTION
who has shown how the child constructs reality from infancy on-
ward. Bell also notes that Hartmann, Kris, Lowenstein, and
Rapaport in their postulations of an autonomous ego from
earliest infancy added to this constructionist psychoanalytic
view. An infant viewed as having a region of organization
which is conflict-free is considerably more powerful than a n in-
fant viewed as entirely at the mercy of conflict.
Bell considers that this background, along with a strong
maturational stage approach propounded by Gesell, provided
the fertile ground for the flowering interest in Piagetian theory
in the 1950s. T h e organizing capacity of the infant could now
be appreciated. But a paradox becomes apparent, since that ap-
preciation is still incomplete. It is as if Freuds theory of the
traumatic origins of mental illness had more continuing
influence than his constructionist views, according to one state-
ment of the authors.
Harpers chapters dealing with animals are less central to
this essay, but some of his broad concepts are worthy of men-
tion. Zoologists have long recognized that parental responses of
animals depend heavily on the behavior of their offspring.
Mutuality of stimulation is considered the essence of animal
social relations. Two concepts of Harper stand out --behavioral
matching and behavioral buffering. Both emerge from a
comparative-evolutionary perspective. Behavioral matching
refers to the fact that there are species-specific, biologically
organized patterns of mutual matching in parental and filial
behavior systems. Both change in development in a dynamic
fashion, Behavioral buffering refers to the fact that, through
evolution, a margin of error is built into behavioral patterns
having high adaptive value; thus in many mammalian species
the young provide a variety of stimuli to which caregivers are
sensitive. Offspring contributions to development are that im-
portant.
T h e central chapters of this book are written by Bell. In
one, he updates a well-known scholarly review he originally
wrote nearly a decade ago. His well-documented thesis is that

data from human socialization studies can be interpreted as

showing the effects of children on parents instead of the opposite
as they have conventionally been interpreted. Since the 1960s,
students of socialization have increasingly been able to think
beyond the oversimplified view of the parent as the agent of
culture and the child as the object of it. T o give a dramatic ex-
ample: there is now recognition that infant characteristics play
an important role in such phenomena as child abuse and infant
marasmus. In the words of Bell, we are learning that . . .prog-
ress towards cultural norms involves mutual adjustment and ac-
commodation. Parental control through power and long-range
intentional behavior is offset to a certain extent by childrens
sheer activity in starting interactions, their resistance to
domination, and their inherently appealing nature (p. 65).
The chapter on research strategies outlines 17 ways to par-
tial out the direction of effects in socialization studies, and is
surprisingly readable even though of primary interest to
researchers. This brings us to the chapter on human infancy
which I believe to be the most creative of the book. In addition
to reviewing research data, Bell presents a theory of how the in-
fant socializes his mother during the first year.
Three major periods of development in the first year are
described from the point of view of the infants contribution to
the developing interaction system. The periods are based on
data and ideas furnished by the previous monograph of Emde,
Gaensbauer, and Harmon (1976). I n the first period following
birth, there is an activation of what Bell refers to as the
behavior interaction system. The period extends from birth to
two months and is considered one of primary caregiving in
which the most powerful influences are the demanding
characteristics of the infants crying and helpless appearance.
The infant is biologically programmed to provide readable cues
to its condition, and although these are often stressful, they do
not on the average exceed motheis limits of tolerance. The sec-
ond period Bell calls that of the social interaction system; it
emerges from three to six months. The inauguration of this

190 BOOK SECTION
period is under maturational control and is hallmarked by a

reduction in fussing and increases in wakefulness, noncrying
vocalization, predictable. social smiling and eye-to-eye contact,
and capacity for learning. Now there are more rewards in face-
to-face reciprocal interaction. Infants and caregivers become in-
volved in games with interested, pleasurable encounters dur-
ing wakefulness. The next period, from seven to twelve months,
is called the period of attachment, and refers to a further
differentiation in the caregiving system. Now the infant
responds differentially to the primary caregiver, and there are
distress reactions to strangers and to separation. Social interac-
tion is carried out increasingly at a distance, and there is a need
for control and protection consequent on the infants increase in
motor capability and exploratory behavior. Communication ex-
changes go beyond smiling, vocalizing, and touching as mother
and infant can enjoy one another at a distance as well as up
close; the background for this is that of an intense and special
relationship the infant has created in the mind of the mother by
responding differently to her than to others.
In placing this model of infant socialization in context, Bell
uses a control systems approach to the regulation of behaviors
between caregiver and infant. This approach is modified from
Bowlby and has extensive usefulness for understanding parental
adaptations to infants of different temperaments, especially
handicapped infants. The mother of a hypotonic premature, for
example, may be more active in caregiving than she otherwise
would. And the mother of a hyperactive infant may be less ac-
tive than usual. Mothers and infants make compensatory ad-
justments to extreme variations in expectable behavior. These
adjustments in turn may confound the developmental
psychologist who is looking for deveIopmenta1 continuities since
different outcomes may result depending on what compen-
satory adjustments are employed.
The reader cannot help but be impressed with the case for
the changing model of the infant which Bell and Harper por-
tray. The infant is biologically organized for social interaction

CHANGING hlODELS OF INFANCY 191
and contributes in a primary and intricate way to the socializa-

tion relationships with caregivers. Socialization is indeed
bidirectional .as the infant changes and is changed and as
developmental complexity increases. Now we move to a con-
sideration of the newborn. There, in a still more focused way,
we will see how detailed research has led to a changing model
for early development and for what is predictable and ivhat is
not.
ORGANIZATION AND STABILITYOF NEWBORNBEHAVIOR:A

COhlhIENTARY O N THE BRAZELTON
NEONATAL
ASSESSMENT
SCALE.A . Surnero$, Ed.
Compared with the other books reviewed, this selection would

certainly be off the beaten track for the psychoanalytic reader. It
is a scientific archival monograph which is not intended as a
commercial venture. Nonetheless, it tells a dramatic story. It
was not long ago that the standard clinical wisdom in pediatrics
assumed that the newborn could not see much, could not hear
much, and was diffusely undifferentiated in behavior. T.
Berry Brazelton, in the midst of a busy pediatric practice,
became increasingly unhappy with this wisdom. T h e conse-
quence of this was that he devoted more and more of his time to
research in order to standardize his observations that newborns
could regulate their behavioral state in response to stress, could
orient to a variety of stimuli, could display a repertoire of coor-
dinated activities, and could sustain affective interchanges from
caregivers. Wisely, he enlisted the collaboration of a large
number of developmental psychologists to develop and standar-
dize what then became known as the Neonatal Behavioral
Assessment Scale (NBAS). This instrument, which so suc-
cessfully documents the behavioral organization of the
newborn, has been widely applied by pediatricians,
psychologists, nurses, and psychiatrists who have come to ap-
preciate the newborn in new ways.
This monograph contains contributions from seven
,

192 BOOK SECTION
developmental psychology laboratories which have actively

used the scale and have become increasingly concerned with
what it does and does not accomplish. The NBAS itself consists
of 20 reflex items that assess neurological integrity and 27
behavioral items that test the newborns capacity to organize
responses to standardized animate and inanimate stimuli. The
exam is geared to capture the complexity of these responses as
the newborn moves from sleep states through crying and alert
states. The importance of assessing the capacity for organized
responses within different behavioral states is emphasized as is
the importance of obtaining the babys best performance.
The chapters deal with detailed, carefully conducted
factor-analytic and other scaling studies which document the
many dimensions of newborn behavior tapped by the NBAS.
The chapters also document that day-to-day stability of items,
factors, or clusters is low and that there are weak or nonexistent
relations between newborn scores and later behavior. In other
words, prediction (or individual stability) is moderate or poor
during the newborn period and is worse as development con-
tinues beyond it. I was fortunate to hear the original papers
which now appear in this monograph during the Society for
Research in Child Development meetings of 1977. I was struck
with the consistency of research conclusions leading to this
message about instability, and there was an apologetic tone.
The presenters felt bad; the NBAS had achieved world-wide re-
spectability; its founder and his colleagues had taught child
development much about the richness of newborn behavioral
organization. The clinical concern for individual differences led
to plans for a form of validation of the Scale through finding
temperament patterns, if not patterns of risk for subsequent
deviance. Lack of prediction about developmental outcome
seemed embarrassing after so much effort.
Appropriately, the apologetic tone disappeared from the
final version of the monograph and the impact of the papers is
sharpened. Careful research using the NBAS has advanced our
knowledge about the complexity of the newborns organized

CHANGING hiODELS OF INFANCY 193
functioning. But perhaps the struggle with stability and predic-

tion has yielded a still more important lesson-one about
developmental models. These are discussed in the monograph
and are worthy of note.
At first, some of the authors seemed to have assumed that
the lack of predictability of individual differences using the
NBAS might have been due to inadequate training of testers or
inadequate standardization of conditions. Consequently, great
efforts went into improving both areas. Data reported in this
monograph were collected by well-trained people under some of
the best of circumstances. Horowitz and her colleagues, for ex-
ample, developed a version of the scale that assessed modal(or
average) performance in addition to optimal performance, hop-
ing that stability would be enhanced. Results, reported in this
volume, are not dramatically better. One imagines the in-
vestigators gradually accepted the fact, disillusioning as it
seemed to be, that the search for stable individual differences
using the NBAS is unrewarding and inappropriate. The NBAS
is not a predictor of later developmental outcome. Instead, it
documents the complexity of contemporary newborn behavior
and the fact that this behavior changes in a dynamic way with
development. As Sameroff notes, the first few months of life are
better typified by a series of dynamic transitions, with changes
occurring in the way infants are organized to control
physiological, motor, and arousal systems. Brazelton concludes
that the NBAS was originally designed as a clinical instrument
and that it probably has been used to answer research questions
about developmental outcome which, although urgent, are
beyond its scope. It is a process-oriented instrument intended to
reflect complex changing aspects of the newborns functioning
and, since recovery and reorganization are major aspects of that
functioning following birth, it would be foolish to expect more
than moderate stability. He and Kaye, in another chapter,
suggest multiple testing for enhancing stability, a procedure
that is somewhat promising but still would not yield a great deal
of predictiveness beyond days or weeks. Horowitz and her col-

194 BOOK SECTION
leagues point out that test-retest unreliability should be con-

sidered data about change and should not be discarded as a
measurement error. Sameroff offers a chapter that synthesizes
the research reported in the monograph. H e points out that the
problem is one of assessing the development of a dynamic
system with standard statistical techniques which have no
dynamic component except in error variance. (This limitation,
which is a major one inherent in the standard statistical ap-
proach of the developmental psychologist, will be discussed at
more length in our final review.) Just as the positive features of
the NBAS have documented the newborns organized complexi-
ty in current functioning, its negative features (i.e., its poor
stability) have documented the dynamic complexity of develop-
ment itself. We need to reexamine our developmental models
from this point of view.
Even when the microscope is focused on early infancy, our
observations compel the following conclusion: our old model of
development as a linear process is inappropriate. We must take
into account qualitative transitions in behavior, times when
there are changes in developmental organization. As the regula-
tion of behavior shifts, such changes can be understood using
organismic or field models as advocated by Spitz (1959).
Sameroff, in his discussion, points to the biobehavioral shift
around two postnatal months which was a transition also
highlighted by Bell and Harper. Many developmental changes
occurring during the first two months are relatively indepen-
dent of environmental influences as long as the basic physical
needs of the infant are met. With time, there is a shift from the
initial endogenous control of behavioral and emotional systems
to exogenous control as the childs increased wakefulness per-
mits greater sensorimotor involvement and as emotional ex-
pression becomes more and more related to exogenous factors,
There is no reason to expect stability of individual differences
across such a developmental shift in organization. In Sameroffs
view, the ~ e u e l o p ~ ~ use
t f f Zof the NBAS could now be brought
into focus to map changes- changes in internal organization

over the course of development and changes in response to

varied caretaking environments.
In reviewing this monograph, it occurred to me that a
striking biological question has seldom been asked. Is it not like-
ly that variability and range of behavior are highly adaptive? T o
put it another way, would not variability provide selective ad-
vantage during evolution and therefore be preprogrammed in
our species? A newborn characterized by sufficient variability in
behavior might be favored since there would be more oppor-
tunities for matching such behavior with any given caretaking
environment, and caretaking environments are to a con-
siderable degree unpredictable. In fact, a vulnerable infant
might be one who has a narrow range of variability. Even
though predictability of behavior might be greater, caregiver
"matching" would be more difficult. Thus, to the extent that this
generalization about variability is true, we have still another
reason why our search for developmental predictability has
been problematic.
This monograph gives added emphasis to the changing
view of the infant as socially organized, the view portrayed so
vividly for us by Bell and Harper. The NBAS directly assesses
the newborn infant as a social being and reveals it to be
biologically organized for dynamic feedback operations with a
social surround. As Als put it, the healthy newborn can be seen
as capable of eliciting an organization from caregivers which he
lacks and needs for development. The newborn enhances his
own organization by interaction with specific caregivers. Of
course, to the extent that this is true, we have another more
subtle reason why developmental stability of individual differ-
ences would not be expected. Our new model of the newborn
tells us that not only are developmental influences bidirectional
(infant to parent as well as parent to infant) but they are tran-
sactional (each contributing to the changing social organization
in which they are immersed and which influences each).
This now launches us toward a more direct consideration
of the continuity issue and the role of early experience in

196 BOOK SECTION
development.
EARLYEXPERIENCE: A. M. Clarke and

MYTHAND EVIDENCE.
A. D. B. Clarke.
Aside from its provocative title, we first run into a potential bias
of the authors in this books dedication. It states: To our sons,
Robert and Peter, who suffered maternal deprivation and
multiple foreign caretaking during the critical period. . . .
Following upon this and in the preface, the authors tell about
carrying on a campaign of skepticism for twenty years against
the view that environment in the early years exerts a dispropor-
tionate and irreversible effect as compared with later. Consider-
ing this straightforward admission and considering the format
of this book-ten chapters by others, and five integrative
chapters by the authors- I decided to read first the chapters
written by others, most of which are reprinted from the scien-
tific literature. M y strategy was then to turn to the contributions
of Clarke and Clarke to evaluate their scholarship and their
conclusions in the face of admitted bias.
The first three chapters deal with selected case studies of
formerly isolated children. Davis describes two cases of severe
deprivation in early childhood wherein recovery in a corrective
environment was much more than expected. Interestingly, in
commenting on the speed with which one of these cases
achieved normal intellectual development after deprivation,
Davis made an analogy to the recovery of body weight in a
growing child after an illness, i.e., recovery occurred with a
faster rate of growth for a period after the illness until normal
weight for the age was attained. Two chapters by Koluchova
describe severe deprivation in Czechoslovakian twins who
suffered gross retardation from their infancy experience. After-
ward, they were placed in a foster home and made up their in-
tellectual deficit. In a well-documented followup study at eleven
years of age, they appeared to be doing well.
We then proceed to a number of studies of development in

natural settings.
A chapter by Kagan describes his observations of
Guatamalan infants. These observations, now supplemented by
his day-care study (to be reviewed as the next book) form the
basis for his changed views about continuities from infant ex-
perience to later development. One-year-old infants from the
highlands of Guatamala were observed to be quiet, nonsmiling,
motorically flaccid, minimally alert, and passive. Relative to
U.S. standards, they were 3-12 months behind in cognitive
development. Kagans research team found that during the first
year these infants were typically restricted inside a windowless
hut; they were with their mothers, often in a sling, with no toys
and little interaction with other adults. At one year, by
American developmental psychologists standards, things
looked terrible. However, in the middle of the second year,
when the infant became mobile, development took a leap and
catching up took place. The infant was now allowed to leave
the hut and encounter the greater variety of the outside world.
In followup studies, the cognitive retardation observed during
the first year seemed to have no validity for prediction of recall
and recognition memory as tested at 10-11 years of age by
Kagan and his colleagues. The.same was true for tests of
perception. When comparison was made with a group of
Guatamalan infants from an urban setting who did not have
these early restricted environments, there were no differences in
cognitive and perceptual abilities. Even more striking, all
Guatamalan ten-year-olds performed at a level comparable to
those of American middle-class children. Thus, concerning
what he calls universal cognitive competencies, Kagan states,
u. . .a slower rate of mastery of the universal abilities during the
first two years, places no serious constraints on eventual attain-

ment of many of the competencies of pre-adolescence (p. 121).
H e then develops a point which will be a theme strongly empha-
sized in others contributions in this book as well as in his later
day-care study. There is no question that early experience has
an effect on the development of animals and man. However, if

198 BOOK SECTION
the early environment does not permit full realization of

psychological competence, the organism will function below its
ability so long as it remains in that context, but if transferred to
an environment presenting greater variety, the young organism
is capable of exploiting the new experience and catching up.
A chapter by Wayne Dennis reviews studies of orphanage
children in Lebanon (Children of the Creche). Dennis took
advantage of a natural experiment when for the first time in
1956 adoption was legalized and he could contrast ages of adop-
tion with subsequent outcomes, especially inasmuch as he had
done earlier studies in the institution involved. The findings
were that those adopted before the age of two soon reached an
I.Q. in the normal expectable range. (Interestingly, the in-
ference of a critical time at two years, after which development
of I.Q. does not recover with adoption of institutionalized
children, is criticized by Clarke and Clarke who cogently point
to features of selective adoption that may account for the
Lebanon finding.)
A study of Tizard and Rees compared the effects of adop-
tion, restoration to mother, and continued institutionalization
on the cognitive development of four-year-olds who had been in
English residential nurseries. The institutions themselves were
of good quality, with high staff-to-child ratios, but with official
disapproval of close personal relationships and with many staff
changes. Adoption took place between the ages of two and four.
Findings were that the I.Q. scores of the adopted four-year-olds
were higher than those of the others, and I.Q. scores of the
restored children were lower. The authors found no evidence of
cognitive retard,ation of the four-year-olds institutionalized
since early infancy. It is their conclusion that a good staff-child
ratio, together with a generous provision of toys, books, and
outings will provide an average level of cognitive development
at four years, in the absence of any close and/or continuous
relationship with the mother substitute (p. 146).
A contribution by Michael Rutter describes studies of two
samples of children, one on the Isle of Wight and one in Lon-

don, in which maternal separations of more than faur con-

secutive weeks occurred. Differences in antisocial behavior were
associated with ratings of marital discord and not with the
separation experiences themselves. Rutter reviews other studies
which are in accord with his conclusions. Delinquency tends to
be more common in unhappy, unbroken homes than in har-
monious, broken homes. Delinquency rates are increased for
boys whose parents are divorced or separated but not for boys
who lost a parent by death. The effects of parental discord seem
to be more marked in boys-a fact Rutter feels is a reflection of
the general tendency for psychological vulnerability in males.
Rutter concludes that parental separation need not produce ir-
reversible effects as manifested in overt disorders; at least for
delinquency, marital discord was more pathogenic.
A study by Kadushin of 91 Wisconsin families who
adopted older children is fascinating. These children became
available for adoption when the courts terminated parental
rights because of neglect and/or abuse. They were removed
from their own homes at a mean age of 3.5 years, placed for
adoption around 7 years, and were approximately 14 years of
age at followup. O n the average, they had experienced more
than two changes of homes prior to adoptive placement.
Although the precision of followup information is unclear, in-
terviews with adoptive parents and examination of the agency
records led to the general conclusion that these children seemed
to be doing well. The author states that this unexpected conclu-
sion is bolstered by a review of other studies of adoption beyond
infancy. Where there have been followup studies there are often
dramatic instances whereiii early deprivation and trauma have
occurred, but children improve with an improved environment.
Statements of surprise in the child welfare literature are ex-
pressed again and again in these instances; children who are ex-
pected to be irreparably harmed often learn to accept affection
in the new environment, become affectionate, and thrive. But
the author makes an important additional point: it would be
wrong to suggest that deprivation or abuse are not harmful.

200 BOOK SECTION
There are subsets of children who do not do well in an improved

environment, and we know little about improvement in relation
to potential. Overall, the author calls for a reorientation in child
welfare with greater respect being accorded to more proximate
experiences in development; from the data at hand, the
preadoptive past seems to have less importance for determining
adjustment than experiences in the adoptive present.
Now to the Clarke and Clarke chapters. Surprisingly, in
view of their admitted strong advocacy position, their material
seems relatively balanced. The super-environmentalism often
implied by our attitudes about the crucial importance of the first
years of life must be challenged. Generalizations about mater-
nal deprivation have often come from situations in which
children were subjected to severe deprivation in infancy and
then reared in similar conditions throughout the whole period
following infancy. Moreover, the concept of deprivation seems
more complex than a simplified blanket notion of mother-child
separation; different forms and durations of experience as well
as the nature of situations before and after deprivation are im-
portant. Certainly one should decry the attitude about the
mother-child relationship which has often led agencies to con-
sider that a bad home is better than a good institution; this is
clearly not the case.
In criticizing the animal literature on the effects of early ex-
perience the authors make the valid points that most of these are
based on extreme experimental situations, that few attempts
have been made to test whether effects are truly irreversible,
and that age-specific controls have seldom been used for testing
effects later in life.
The studies of formerly isolated children raise serious ques-
tions about the possibility of an early period during which the
organism is irreversibly vulnerable to environmental influences.
The authors state, . . .it appears that there is virtually no
psychosocial adversity to which some children have not been
subjected, yet later recover, granted a radical change in cir-
cumstances (p. 268).

The authors conclude by stating there has been a

disproportionate amount of time devoted to the earliest years of
development. They speak of the greater need for recognition of
the possibility of personal change following early misfortune,
although they temper this by stating their belief that the limits
to personal change get smaller as age increases. At times the
authors seem to overstate their case against the significance of
early .experience for future development. But they are not
against good mothering or efforts to optimize early ex-
perience- they merely wish to redress a balance. They end with
a statement about which psychoanalysts could hardly disagree.
They appeal for a more careful empirical analysis of the needs
of individual children and the avoidance of oversimplified no-
tions and related social actions which can give rise to self-
fulfilling prophesies.
What is the psychoanalyst to make of this? First, we must
be critical. The outcome variables in studies of early adversity
are usually in the cognitive-intellectual realm and measures of
adjustment are often gross (delinquency versus nondelinquen-
cy, parental and school reports of doing well). Thus, there are
threshold issues in assessing problematic development; a child
could suffer ego deficit, neurotic symptoms, and even mild
depression without being identified in these studies. Further, as
a number of investigators in this collection have acknowledged,
the fact that a later corrective environment reverses earlier
mental deficit so as to bring an individual to an average level of
functioning says nothing about how that individual would have
functioned in relation to his or her potential had not the early
adversity occurred. Two points, especially important for
psychoanalysts, are alluded to by Clarke and Clarke but could
have received more emphasis. The first is that individual
differences are quite marked in response to adversity in all
studies. The second is that the child who has suffered early
deprivation can contribute to problems even with an improved
environment and may even change that environment by his
continuing behavioral problems. Although they do not carry it

202 BOOK SECTION
far, the authors conclude that an interactional model of

development is more valid than a critical period model. Single
occurrences rarely will produce permanent effects, although
they may initiate a sequence of misfortunes that confirm, for ex-
ample, a childs expectation of what life has to offer.
The psychoanalyst, working intensively with patients on
an intrapsychic level, deals in just the areas of ego functioning
not addressed by these studies. However, the overwhelming
evidence that wider ego deficit need not occur when an early
adverse environment is corrected by a later salutary one is ex-
tremely important and cannot be denied. Even on the basis of
gross outcome measures, we would have to say that correction
can occur to a far greater extent than our theories might have
predicted. There is more we need to understand. To take
another lead from Spitz (1959) we might borrow an em-
bryological model from Waddington (1940) who conceptualized
the epigenetic landscape wherein there are strong self-righting
tendencies in development. The human organism appears to be
programmed by evolution to produce normal developmental
outcomes under all but the most adverse circumstances, and
there are strong self-righting and self-organizing tendencies in
development. Given a sufficiently decent environment, the
child mobilizes self-righting tendencies to catch up after early
prolonged adversity. According to the same model, single
Ktraumaticevents, by themselves, would rarely produce per-
manent effects -a principle psychoanalysts have increasingly
come to appreciate. There will be more about this model and its
usefulness as this essay moves through our final two books.
INFANCY: Kagan, A. B.
ITS PLACE IN H U h i A N DEVELOPMENT.J.
Kearsly, and Phil$ R. Zelazo.
To use Kagans phrase, the Kincentiveevent for my writing this

essay was occasioned by the publication of this particular book.
It had just been reviewed in the New York Times when a number
of my psychoanalytic colleagues asked me about it. Was Kagan

discounting the importance of all early experience? From their

comments, I realized my colleagues were on the way to dis-
counting Kagan. I had not read the book yet, but knew of some
of the research? of Kagan's flair for the dramatic? and above all,
of his careful and creative thought. He is a leading force in
American developmental psychology, is in many ways im-
mersed in a Zeitgeist of changing models. In no way should he be
discounted? especially by psychoanalysts. I read the book, and
the idea for this review came quickly.
The volume has a curious structure. The day care study is
its main point and can be found as a self-contained monograph
of somewhat over 100 pages, beginning midway through the
volume. It is followed by extensive tabular and other sup-
plementary material placed as an appendix. This work,
however, must have one of the longest prefaces on record: three
chapters that discuss the general topic of infancy and early ex-
perience which occupy nearly half the book.
The main study sample consisted of 33 infants who attend-
ed a day care center created and administered by the in-
vestigators. The subjects were healthy Chinese and Caucasian
first- or secon'd-born children from working- and middle-class
families in south Boston. They were considered norm4 and
were enrolled between three and five months of age, remained
in the day care center during weekdays from eight to five while
their mothers worked, and completed the day care experience at
29 months of age. But this was hardly your usual day care
center: it was deliberately made to be one of the best. The
teacher-to-child ratio was maintained at 1:3 for infants and 1:5
for toddlers. Each child was assigned a single caretaker for ap-
proximately the first year and was then moved to a toddler sec-
tion where another primary caretaker was assigned. Teachers
were expected to establish close personal relationships not only
with their assigned infants, but also with parents, exchanging
information about behavioral events with them on a daily basis.
The curriculum for the first year was designed to enhance
cognitive and social development by means of extensive one-to-

204 BOOK SECTION
one social interaction with caretakers and, during the second

year, the curriculum emphasized language stimulation and
symbolic approaches to materials.
Not surprisingly, this approach resulted in infants becom-
ing attached to the caretaker-teachers in the sense that they
sought them out first during times of uncertainty. Children ex-
pressed little distress when brought to the center each morning,
but neither did they express obvious joy when they saw their
teachers. The authors point to what might be termed a Mon-
day crust phenomenon. Mondays were usually characterized
by more irritability and by a disruptive atmosphere in the
nursery.
The research program involved collecting data on these
children and on a group of children who had no day care center
experience (home controls). Areas of data collection included:
attentiveness to visual and auditory events, emotional and
social reactivity, and cognitive functioning. Each child was
tested at two-month intervals for the first year and then again at
. 2 0 and 29 months.
The questions asked by the study involved: (1) the
differences between day care and home-reared children, (2) the
differences between the two ethnic groups, (3) the nature of
growth functions for the variables across the first two and a half
years of life.
Suprisingly, there were virtually no differences attributable
to the day care center experience. The growth functions for at-
tentiveness, cognitive, affective and social variables during the
first two years of life were essentially identical for day care
center children and home-reared children. Findings in the
social domain related to maternal attachment were most strik-
ing. Developmental curves for separation protest to mothers
departure in an unfamiliar context were the same for both
groups of children, indicating, as the authors state, that daily
separation from mother over a two-year period is not relevant to
this phenomenon. When the children were systematically
tested in an experimental social situation, they showed a strik-

ing preference for their mothers when they were bored, tired, or
distressed- going to them seven times more often than other
familiar adults, and there were no differences between ex-
perimental and home control groups.
About the only demonstrable effect of the day care center
experience was found in peer social behavior as tested at 13, 20,
and 29 months of attendance. T h e children at the day care
center seemed to have-a few months acceleration in the normal
growth function for apprehension of an unfamiliar child; this
emerged sooner, peaked sooner, and waned sooner. In sum-
marizing a wealth of findings, the authors conclude: It is sur-
prising that 3,500 hours of regular contact with other young
children had little influence. . . . Attachment to the mother and
rate of cognitive development, the two critical concerns of
American parents, did not appear to be altered by the day care
center experience (p. 260).
In evaluating these findings, we need to remind ourselves
that this is a highly unusual best of Harvard demonstration
project, far removed from what the average day care center
resources might be able to provide. Nonetheless, the results are
important. In discussins their findings referable to maternal at-
tachment the authors are reminded o f Israeli kibbutzim studies
where there are similar findings. In these studies it was shown
that infants reared over 20 hours of each day in an infant house
with a special caretaker still preferred mother over the special
caretaker when tested in interaction situations. Thus it would
seem to be the quality of interaction between child and care-
taker that is important, not the amount of time each spends
with the other. But what is this quality? Theauthors, in their
speculation about this, illustrate their bias. According to them,
the infant has greater cognitive uncertainty with his mother as
well as more intense emotional encounters with her. The
authors do not discuss the possibility that the earlier experience
with mother (before three and a half months, when they entered
the day care center, for example) may have been of special im-
portance.

206 BOOK SECTION
There were differences between the two ethnic groups.

Chinese infants showed more evidence of social inhibition, and
facial displays of affect at the end of the first year and through
the second year. In addition they had a less variable heart rate
at every age. These findings, although they are discussed by the
authors, are unclear as to their implications.
The findings related to overall developmental functions are
descriptive and add valuable data in domains where other data
already exist. As already indicated, there were no differences
between day care center and home-reared groups. The authors
take a strong maturational point of view about this. They
review studies of others in which data were collected under
different circumstances in different environments and in which
the developmental course of cognitive and affective social
phenomena were found to be the same. They conclude: The
age functions for attention, vocalization, smiling as well as
separation distress and peer apprehension seem to reflect fun-
damental biological changes that permit the infant to process in-
formation in different ways at different ages. Although experi-
ence monitors the age of emergence or decline of a com-
petence. . .it cannot, except under extreme circumstances, stop
the appearance of those functions that are part of our genome
nor prevent the disappearance of those that have lost their
value (p. 280).
Like Bell and Harper, and like Sameroff, the authors then
discuss the importance of times of developmental shifts. They
emphasize two transition ages, the period of shift at 7-9 months
when short-term memory is amplified and attentiveness in-
creases, and the period of shift at 13 months when there is
heightened exploration and fearfulness. They believe these
times of developmental shift are reflective of new CNS matura-
tional events.
This brings us to the fourth question the authors make so
much of, that of stabilily of individual dgerences across development.
The findings in this area are stark. There is even less stability
over the first two and a half years than Kagan (1971) had

CHANGING hfODELS O F INFANCY 207
reported in an earlier longitudinal stady. Some short-term

stability is demonstrable, but as the transition ages (7-9 months
and 13 months) are crossed, individual stability becomes very
weak and one cannot predict an individuals rank on a given
variable from an earlier age.
To critically summarize: the lack of findings of differences
between the day care center infants and home-reared infants are
difficult to generalize in any practical way. It certainly would be
inappropriate to infer that Kagan and his colleagues have
shown that day care has no important effects on early develop-
ment. This is true for several reasons: the very special nature of
the Harvard Day Care Center, the lack of home observations in
the comparison group (to really know what was going on there),
and the logical difficulties inherent in generalizing from
negative findings, especially with relatively small numbers. But
the findings about the lack of stable individual differences across
development are challenging. Since the study replicated
findings of others concerning major developmental functions
across the first two and a half years, and since their data were
carefully collected, it seems to me these negative results raise
fundamental questions about the nature of early developmental
continuity.
We can now appreciate the long introductory essays
(which could have well been published as a separate
monograph). In these the authors discuss the changing view
about continuity and development. For our purposes, they not
only extend our view about changing models, but also suggest
some perspectives that seem compatible with recent
psychoanalytic thinking. The authors discuss the widespread
assumption that experiences during the first year extend far in-
to the future and alter, in some mysterious way, the structures
and processes that will emerge in the three- four- and five-year
old. Such a view assumes considerable continuity in develop-
ment (p. 2). The psychoanalyst will note the emotionalism and
bias in the phrase some mysterious way, but the reasoning in
the argument is well worth pursuing. The point is made that too

208 BOOK SECTION
often we have been looking at infancy retrospectively, from the

adults point of view, and that recent prospective research has
changed that. Too often we have evaluated the infant in order
to define ourselves rather than study how he works as a living
entity on his own terms. When one looks prospectively one
becomes impressed with developmental transformations. One is
not necessarily impressed with these transformations in
retrospect because the present provides a limitation of all the
possibilities in the past. The authors state: . . .there may be
more discontinuities in psychological development than we
have wanted to acknowledge. The state of being a caterpillar
always occurs before butterflyhood, but it is difficult to discern
the competencies that the adult butterfly inherited from the
hairy larva (p. 26). In looking at psychological continuities
from stage to stage we may have been falling into the error of
post hoc ergo propter hoc. After all, the psychological structures of
early childhood are dynamic and undergoing consolidation and
transformation; many of these may become free of the original
experiences that preceded them.
There is some discussion of the enigma about how to ex-
plain the appearance of a new psychological competence in
development. Indeed it seems to me this is one of the great
mysteries of life which can be lost sight of by analysts, namely,
the creative construction of a new feature in development.
Psychoanalysis has been a clinical science of analysis and has
paid much less attention to synthesis. But this is a problem of all
science; it is merely dramatized in the developmental sciences
wherein repeated syntheses and integrations are so vital.
That the authors make use of a constructive model of
development -one which highlights individuality- is attested
to by the following beautiful example from the book. This ex-
ample in effect illustrates how a twenty-six-month-old girl uses
fantasy in constructing reality. The girl is playing with a set of
toys. These include two small dolls about 2 inches long, a small
bed of 4 inches, and a larger bed of 12 inches. After playing a
while, the girl says she needs another bed. Having scrutinized

CHANGING MODELS O F INFANCY 209
all the available toys, she finally selects a small wooden sink,
which is about 4 inches long, and places the second doll in it
next to the appropriately sized bed of 4 inches. She then states,
Now Mommy and Daddy are sleeping. The authors note that
this girl generated an esthetic standard and that, in order to
meet it, she distorted reality and used an object that obviously
belonged to the wrong functional category. She used those
aspects of reality that served her fantasy and rejected those that
did not. . .an act that reveals the inherent ambiguity to phrases
like accommodation or reality testing (p. 119).
In terms of appreciating the role of fantasy in constructing
reality, this passage reads like some of our contemporary
psychoanalytic literature. But we might ask more about con-
tinuities. Where are the continuities of experience that
psychoanalysts deal with as a fundamental fact? Obviously, the
data of Kagan and his colleagues do not deal with the organiz-
ing influence of the development of the self and its continuous
affective features. In my view, this is where developmental con-
tinuity will be found, where bridges will be made to the in-
dividual experiential level, and where much research needs to
be done in developmental psychology as well as in
psychoanalysis.
HANDBOOK DEVELOPMENT. J. o.rc$iy, Ed.

OF INFANT
In my final review, I a m obviously not going to do justice to

editor Joy Osofskys nearly 1,000-page state-of-the-art review
volume on infant developmental research. The 28 chapters,
written by leaders in the field, for the most part are represen-
tative of the thinking and data accumulated over the past
decade; as such, they provide a major reference and review for
students and researchers.
Rather than attempt to be comprehensive, I shall comment
on a number of methodological chapters which concern the
how to do it of developmental research. Methodological issues
portend the future. Not only do they reveal the weaknesses of

210 BOOK SECTION
the field as it exists, but they point to where the field is headed,
particularly if needed directions are indicated by those who are
known innovators. Such is the case here in the chapters of
Porges, Sackett, Lewis and Starr, Beckwith, and McCall.
I think we see a dramatic trend. T h e authors write of the
need for moving beyond our standard approaches which,
ironically, have guided developmental psychology to be con-
cerned more with identifying age-related differences than with
describing developmental functions. T o understand processes
we must look at changes over time. When we do that, we can
devise strategies to see what leads to what and what the nature
of developmental continuities might be.
T h e chapters by Porges and Sackett illustrate that an un-
familiar world of new statistical approaches looms before us.
Because it is often important to determine the form of an age
function before inferring developmental processes, curve$thg
and trend ~ n ~ l y sstatistics
is are important. Moreover, time series
designs allow for analysis of single cases or single interaction
pairs-a hizhly desirable goal, since group data may obscure
developmental processTs. Further, approaches involving quasi
experimental designs are advocated in situations where there is
no possibility of manipulating a n experimental intervention and
its control through randomization. These approaches involve
constructing sets of logical rules to observe changes in an in-
dependent variable and its covariance in the face of rival
hypotheses. I n addition to discussing these approaches, Porges
outlines ways for detecting shifts in developmental variables
and for figuring out whether two variables are causally inter-
related. Sackett, in his chapter, gives an elegant presentation of
his procedures for lag sequential analysis of contingencies in
social interaction research. Sacketts technique (which is now
being applied in a number of major research programs) allows
for the study of dependency relationships in multivariate obser-
vational data by looking for repetitive cycles of occurrence
within and among behaviors.
Chapters by Lewis and Starr and by Beckwith return us

CHANGING MODELS OF INFANCY 21 1
more directly to the question of developmental continuities.

How can we assess them? The basic problem is that of finding
order in change, of identifying continuities in behavioral
systems that are rapidly reorganizing. It seems a mystery is
especially likely when one tries to find underlying continuities in
the midst of qualitative transitions occurring between
developmental stages. Lewis and Starr reflect on the fact that
individual differences in behavior are not particularly stable
over early development, and they consider methodological
reasons that might account for this, especially in terms of
measurement problems. But the authors are more convincing
when they discuss conceptual problems related to these in-
stabilities. We need to understand more about changes in
response meaning and response organization as well as changes
in perception of a stimulus over the course of development - in
other words, according to them, we need to understand more
about the infants developing world. Perhaps then researchers
can appreciate the basis for developmental continuities. They
also discuss the possibility that continuities may be more ap-
parent when a dyadic unit is considered as opposed to an
infants isolated behavior.
Beckwith takes up these issues and discusses the ideaof a
dynamic consistency in development. In spite of the personali-
ty reorganizations that characterize development, perhaps there
are central orientations that set limits on the repertoire of
responses used by an individual. She reviews the difficulties that
longitudinal studies have encountered in demonstrating
stabilities of emotional and social behavior. But rather than
merely reflecting disappointment, she, like the other authors,
espouses a change in attitude. Understanding sources of in-
stability should be as challenging and informative as under-
standing stability. After all, in our complex society it is essential
that most members retain the potential for personality change
throughout life. We must find ways of understanding those
regular sequences of reconstructurings which are part of the de-
velopmental process.

212 BOOK SECTION
The chapter by McCall crystallizes a number of these

issues. H e focuses his discussion on the prediction of I.Q.,
stating that after nearly a half-century of intensive study, the
results are unequivocal: scores from infant mental performance
do not predict later I,Q, to any practical extent. What are we to
make of this?
First of all, we must realize that a measure can have con-
temporary usefulness without having predictive validity. Birth
weight is a useful indicator of current physical development
even though it does not predict later weight. Similarly infant
mental tests may give an indication of contemporary status with-
out predicting later status (cf. our discussion of the Neonatal Be-
havioral Scale). Second, the stability of individual differences is
only one aspect of the inquiry; the developmental function, which
is independent of this, is another. Beyond this, McCall argues
that there is reason to expect that individual differences should be
more stable within a developmental stage than across a stage
boundary. It then follows that an instability in individual
differences may point to a discontinuity in developmental func-
tion. With this in mind, McCall and his colleagues did an
unusual investigation. They analyzed the Berkeley Growth
Study data from this point of view. That longitudinal study,
long since completed, was originally designed to look for con-
tinuities. McCall's findings were that breaks in the stability of
individual differences occurred at 8, 13, and 21 months, and
from other data he -and his colleagues inferred a break at two
months. Since there were also transformations of items making
up scores at these ages, the ages were taken to define stage
boundaries. McCall goes on to speculate that mental develop-
ment may evolve in a stepwise manner: more of X in one stage
may not relate to more or less of Y in another stage. I n words
reminiscent of the lessons from the Sameroff NBAS mono-
graph, he states: ((.. .infancy is a period of enormous meta-
morphosis in the predominant character of mental behavior and
fluctuations in the stability of individual differences. . .we must
abandon our insistence on stability as the criterion for the

validity and utility of developmental measures. . .and open our

thoughts, methods, and statistical approaches to include the
variety of possible transitions that could characterize develop-
mental functions" (p. 731).
McCall, also like Sameroff, then borrows a model original-
ly set forth by the embryologist Waddington. The notion of
"cannalization" is invoked to give a conceptual basis for his
findings about discontinuities in early experience (and, we
might add, to the findings we have received from Clarke and
Clarke, Kagan, and the Sameroff monograph). Cannalization
is a metaphor that refers to a species-typical strong developmen-
tal pathway; the biological predisposition for this pathway is
such that there are built-in self-righting tendencies after any
deflection from the pathway due to adverse environmental cir-
cumstances. McCall proposes that mental development is
strongly cannalized in infancy and less so afterward, meaning
that strong self-righting tendencies exist early on. Thus, in early
infancy, even severe but temporary environmental changes will
not have substantial effects on mental development if the infant
is returned to an adequate environment. After 18-24 months,
cannalization weakens and individual differences and ex-
perience begin to exert differential effects. A more subtle im-
plication is that in early infancy individual differences about a
highly cannalized species-typical developmental function may
be neither stable nor important for future development,
especially after a stage boundary is crossed.
The change after infancy is highlighted by McCall. After
this time individual differences in mental performance begin to
show correlations with both genetic and environmental factors,
and these correlations increase until about six years. McCall
takes this to mean that there is then a weakening of cannaliza-
tion; the rudiments of ability emerge which may not be typical
of all members of the species. Thus species-atypical behaviors
are less strongly cannalized, less prone to self-righting, and
manifest individual differences that may persist as long as an
appropriate genetic and environmental context is available.

214 BOOK SECTION
In discussing the effects of environments McCall states that

long-term effects of early stimulation, when observed, may not
be the result of a permanent imprint on an infant, but the result
of an enriching environment which has been maintained since
the initial positive experience. T h e other side of this is that one
shot enrichments lose their impact as the child progresses from
one stage to the next. The well-known stability in I.Q. perfor-
mance after six, according to McCall, is likely the consequence
of the fact that (1) transformations occur less frequently after six
years of age and (2) the availability of an environment required
to nurture mental growth remains fairly stable for most children
after that time.
Obviously, the reversal of the depressed performance of
rural Guatamalan one-year-olds to average ability by mid-
childhood fits in with this model. When the environment
changed so that it was adaptively adequate, these infants
returned to the biologically relevant pathway and caught u p in
their development. The model can also be applied to the other
examples we have reviewed, where early adverse effects of a n
environment have been reversed.
Infant Developmental Psycholou in Relation to Psychoanalysis

Now to return to the basic question posed at the beginning of
our essay: Will this recent research shake the psychoanalytic
foundations such that all will collapse? Or, to imagine another
scenario, will developmental psychology hold siege, opposing
psychoanalytic theory until it starves from within? I dont think
either will be the case. First of all, in our overall scientific
Zeitgeist, psychoanalysts and developmental psychologists are
influenced by similar models. Both increasingly see the infant as
an active, interactive, and dynamic being who moves toward
higher levels of organized complexity during development. Sec-
ond of all, many of the talented investigators in developmental
psychoIogy have been influenced in their training by psycho-
analysis and psychoanalytic teachers. Now, after a period of a

decade or more of disillusionment with some of the more

abstract aspects of psychoanalytic theory, they are turning at-
tention toward features of the developing human that have al-
ways been central for psychoanalytic scrutiny.
There is increasing interest in the internal world, especially in
cognitive approaches to developmental processes. Perhaps
related to this, psychologists are more concerned with what is
human, what is meaningful, and what is relevant for social
policy. There is increasing interest in methods for studying
changes in individuals over time. There is interest in studying
dynamic changes, i.e., developmental transformations in behavior.
This carries with it an appreciation that internal processes
underlying such changes are not always apparent. Further, the
books reviewed indicate increasing concerns about pro-social
behavior and increasing attention to the age period of 3-6 years.
If these are harbingers of things to come, those psychologists
researching early experience may soon be emphasizing the
oedipal period of development rather than infancy.
There is also an increasing appreciation of conkxi, not only
in terms of environment, but in terms of other aspects of
behavioral functioning- affectivity and social behavior in addi-
tion to cognition and perception. Those who emphasize an
organismic approach in studying development seem more
influential than those using isolated mechanistic approaches.
Related to this, there is a resurgent interest in studying infant
"temperament" and in finding ways to capture the personality of
the young child.
In spite of these trends, however, a psychoanalyst would
undoubtedly have a number of criticisms of the models re-
viewed in these books. Some criticisms derive from the fact that
the tradition for developmental psychology is experimental.
Systematic data collection usually involves a laboratory (or
playroom) procedure where there are attempts to manipulate
variables and isolate effects. These criticisms can be summar-
ized to include the following:
1. Data and generalizations still deal largely with the exter-

216 BOOK SECTION
nal world. They tend to ignore areas like happiness, self-

fulfillment, and the realities of inner life.
2. Models are based more on group data than on in-
dividual data.
3. Models for the most part are still based on a frame of
reference which is narrow with respect to I.Q. and cognitive de-
velopment.
4. In spite of recent trends, most of the models are still
largely nondynamic not only in the psychoanalytic sense, but
also in the sense of not accounting for changing relationships
among different personality variables over time.
Some other criticisms concern the understanding of
resiliency after early adverse experience. These can be sum-
marized as follows:
5. In descriptions of such resiliencythere is no way of ac-
counting for potential, i.e., where an individual might have
been had not the adversity occurred.
6. There are problems of threshold for pathology. In deal-
ing with adverse outcomes, developmental psychology ap-
proaches often only scratch the surface of human problems,
e.g., using delinquency or school problems as an outcome
measure. In addition, there is insufficient attention given to
childhood depression.
7. There is insufficient attention to understanding the
origins and nature of the neurotic process. In particular, there is
a lack of appreciation of early tendencies for repetition in the
service of mastery over adversity and internal conflict (in out-
come studies there is insufficient attention to how some sectors
of the personality become closed off from development).
8. There are limitations to the notion of strongdeve1opmen-
tal functions.It is unlikely that allfunctions are equally cannalized
or equally self-righting. Specification is needed; none exists.
Seeking t h Nature of Early Experience - Chattengesfor Psychoanalysis

Unlike developmental psychology, the tradition of psychoanalysis

is clinical. Systematic data collection involves the strict

maintenance of the analytic situation. Attending to the details
of free association and of evolving transference phenomena
ultimately leads to an understanding of unconscious conflict.
The historical past, as it is re-experienced in analysis, assumes
central importance. Nonetheless, in spite of problems related to
the different domains of interest, I think the changing models of
early experience reviewed in these six books offer some con-
structive challenges to the evolving clinical theory of
psychoanalysis. I offer them in the following areas.
Historical reality. T h e models suggest that what we
reconstruct, and what may be extraordinarily helpful to the pa-
tient in making a biography, may never have happened. The
human being, infant and child, is understood to be fundamen-
tally active in constructing his experience. Reality is neither
given nor necessarily registered in an unmodifiable form.
Perhaps it makes sense for the psychoanalyst to place renewed
emphasis on recent and current experience-first, as a context
for interpreting early experience and second, because it con-
tains within it the ingredients for potential amelioration.
Discontinuities, with major organizational shifts, are promi-
nent in development. It would seem the synthetic ego makes
continuities of self-experience and may construct from modes of
experience and aspects of reality we would never have been
aware of if we were there or on the spot. The stage aspects of
Freuds psychosexual theory may deserve re-emphasis and fur-
ther elaboration. For example, see Freuds (1905) essay where
he discusses the reorganizations of experience that take place at
puberty.
SeLf-r&htini tendencies. There are major developmental func-
tions common to our species that appear in different en-
vironments and therefore seem under maturational control.
Since there is a strong tendency to get back on the track after
deflection from a developmental pathway, a single traumatic
episode is unlikely to be pathogenic; with some developmental
functions, even a brief early experience is unlikely by itself to

218 BOOK SECTION
cause permanent deflection.

Resiliency in the infant. We probably need to tone down the
attitude of irreversibility of adverse effects from early ex-
perience, even when it involves major deprivations of mother-
ing. There is an urgent need to learn from case studies under
psychoanalytic scrutiny. There are many features we do not
understand about the processes by means of which people
develop competence in situations of deprivation and en-
vironmental handicap. Certainly it is true that major changes in
environment can offer major compensation for early en-
vironmental deficit.
Sucial rec$rocip. The human infant is organized for social
interaction from the outset and participates in mutual ex-
changes with caregivers. We cannot regard individuals in the
social surround as static targets of the drives and, from this
angle, terms like object relations are unfortunate in their con-
notations. As the infant changes his social reality he becomes
changed, and some continuities from infancy to afterwards may
be more a product of continuities in social organization than in-
dividual organization.
Importance of Ihe sustained environment. Related to social
reciprocity is a consideration of the importance of the sustained
environment in reversing early effects of deprivation.
Developmental continuities are often explainable in terms of
environmental continuities. Perhaps when the effects of abnor-
mal early experience endure, the psychoanalyst should look to
the environment as well as to the individual. It is important to
understand that transactions within the family have a role in
determining what opportunities prevail and what early ex-
perience endures.
InteTface bdween systems. Psychoanalysts are specialists in
dealing with the intrapsychic world and in particular with the
dynamic unconscious. But we need to pay attention not only to
the intrapsychic realm, conflict-laden and conflict-free, but also
to the interpersonal realm. We must look at the interface be-
tween individual experience and those systems involving fami-

ly, environment, and historical change.

Overemphasis on i n z n y . We have probably placed far too
much emphasis on early experience itself as opposed to the
process by which it i s modified or made use of by subsequent
experience. Psychoanalysts have far too often falsely attributed
diagnostic and therapeutic failures to not being able to under-
stand or modify experiences that occurred in infancy. Perhaps
we overidentify with the helpless infant. While getting started
is important for tuning in to the world and for setting a tone in a
relationship, other times in development are also crucial. It is
worth underscoring that more researchers in developmental
psychology are pointing to the importance of the three-to-six-
year period in development. The oedipal years are still
understudied and may be underemphasized.
I realize this last point is in danger of being misunderstood.
Therefore, in concluding this book essay, I repeat its essence:
we have probably placed far too much emphasis on early ex-
perience itself as opposcd to the process by which it is modified
or made use of by subsequent experience.
REFERENCES
ENDE,R. N . , GAENSBAUER, T.J. &HARMON, R . J . (1976). Emotionalfipression in In-

fancy:A BiobehavioralStu4. Pychol. Issues,Monogr. 37. New York: Int. Univ. Press.
FREUD, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. S. E., 7.
GILL, M. M. & HOLTZMAN, P. S. (1976). Pycholoa versus MetapsychoIou: Psycho-
anabtic Essays in Aiemoty o f George S. Kiein. Pychol. Issues, Monogr. 36. New
York: Int. Univ. Press.
HOLT,R. R. (1967). Motives and llought: Pychoanabtic Essays in Honor o f David
Rapapori. Pychol. Issues, Monogr. 18/19. New York: Int. Univ. Press.
KACAN, J. (1971). Change and Continuib in Infany. New York: Wiley.
RAPAPORT,D. (1959). The Structure of Pychoanabtic Theory: A Systematizing Attempt.
Pychol. Issues, Monogr. 6 . New York: Int. Univ. Press.
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Press.
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P. (1948). The Shaking of the Foundations. New York: Scribners.
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Changing Models Of Infancy And The Nature Of Early Development:

The online version of this article can be found at:

American Psychoanalytic Association

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S OhlE TIhlE AGO AN IhlAGE OF shaking ofthe foundationsWas

Dr. Emde is supported by Research Scientist Award #5 KO2 MH 36808 and

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psychology or by a less abstract clinical theory. Still others (in-

R. Q. Bell H L . V. Harppr. CHILD EFFECTS ON ADULTS. New York: Erlbaum

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CHILDCAREI N THE FAMILY:A REVIEW OF RESEARCHAND SOME

Our entry into the developmental psychology of infancy is pro-

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months and from 6 months to 3 years occupy equal space. It

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stead, mutual interaction of the pair which is stimulating, con-

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treat childhood as an important period for its own sake, not

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communicate with each other concerning their values and

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research, group differences tend to hide individual gains and

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been dominated by effects of adults on children; the authors in-

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data from human socialization studies can be interpreted as

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period is under maturational control and is hallmarked by a

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and contributes in a primary and intricate way to the socializa-

ORGANIZATION AND STABILITYOF NEWBORNBEHAVIOR:A

Compared with the other books reviewed, this selection would

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developmental psychology laboratories which have actively

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functioning. But perhaps the struggle with stability and predic-

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leagues point out that test-retest unreliability should be con-

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over the course of development and changes in response to

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EARLYEXPERIENCE: A. M. Clarke and

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first two years, places no serious constraints on eventual attain-

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the early environment does not permit full realization of

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don, in which maternal separations of more than faur con-

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There are subsets of children who do not do well in an improved

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The authors conclude by stating there has been a

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far, the authors conclude that an interactional model of

To use Kagans phrase, the Kincentiveevent for my writing this

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discounting the importance of all early experience? From their

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one social interaction with caretakers and, during the second

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