ABSTRACT
The picture of infant experience suggested in this book has both differences from and similarities to the pictures currently drawn by psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. Developmental psychology can inquire about the infant only as the infant is observed. To relate observed behavior to subjective experience, one must make inferential leaps. In contrast to the infant as observed by developmental psychology, a different "infant" has been reconstructed by psychoanalytic theories in the course of clinical practice (primarily with adults). Developmental psychology views the maturation of new capacities (such as hand-eye coordination, recall memory, and self-awareness) and their reorganization as the appropriate subject matter of developmental shifts. Attachment theory as it has grown from its origins in psychoanalysis and ethology to include the methods and perspectives of developmental psychology has come to embrace many levels of phenomena.
