ABSTRACT
Physical and emotional constancy is essential in the care of the infant through the period of its early development in order to achieve a healthy personality in the child, future adolescent, and adult. The goal of psychoanalytic treatment is to make conscious the unconscious, to decrease anxiety, to decrease superego severity, and to support the resolution of neurotic conflicts, with all elements leading to the resolution of symptoms. John Bowlby was convinced that the differences in the security of infant–mother attachment would have long-term implications for later intimate relationships and self-understanding, as well as for psychological disturbance. Bowlby’s theories differed from the Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Themes that are consistent through out all these theories include: the psychological consequences of significant early deprivation; the emotional constancy needed by the infant from the beginning of the infant’s life; a good-enough mother; a secure base; the important quality of the unique mother–child relationship.
