ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to specify some of the sources of information about the development of experience, senses, and emotions, treating behaviours not as fragmented data about an infant, but with a deeper dynamics that can be understood by incorporating the psychoanalytic tools of the transference and the countertransference, free-floating attention, and an appropriate setting. Melanie Klein's theory postulates psychological object relations from birth, with the notion of a rudimentary ego able to perceive anxiety and to react to it defensively. The concept of unconscious phantasy is seen as particularly relevant in shaping psychological functioning. Defensive behaviours in the infant have been studied by Rene Spitz and Selma Fraiberg and systematized by Henry Massie and Judith Rosenthal. Defensive behaviour is transitory, a response to temporary conditions. Likewise, primitive defences are a step in normal psychological organization. In some cases the primary contribution to aberrant interaction seemed to come from the child, in some cases the parent.
