ABSTRACT
With the acquisition of upright, free locomotion and with the closely following attainment of that stage of cognitive development that Piaget regards as the beginning of representational intelligence, the human being has emerged as a separate and autonomous person. The quality and measure of the wooing behavior of the toddler toward his mother during this subphase provide important clues to the normality of the individuation process. Fear of losing the love of the object becomes increasingly evident. Incompatibilities and misunderstanding between mother and child can be observed, even in the case of the normal mother and her normal toddler; these are to a great extent rooted in certain contradictions of this subphase. In this third subphase, that of rapprochement, while individuation proceeds very rapidly and the child exercises it to the limit, he also becomes more and more aware of his separateness and employs all kinds of mechanisms in order to resist and undo his actual separateness from mother.
