ABSTRACT
This paper, published in 1922, is striking in that it expresses ideas and a quality of attitude and insight far in advance of its time. Not only does Spielrein perceive the importance of the infant’s relationship to the breast for its psychic development, anticipating the work of Melanie Klein whose paper ‘Weaning’, on the theme of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ breast, appeared in 1936, but Spielrein also records her observations on her daughter as an infant and young child (collating numerous similar observations from other writers) with a precision and sensitivity which seem to point forward to the work of Winnicott and Fordham, among others. Spielrein’s focus here is intentionally restricted to the emergence of language, specifically of the two words, ‘mama’ and ‘papa’. When however she writes of mothers who ‘adapt themselves instinctively to the kinds of language that the child is ready to produce’ one cannot help thinking in a wider context of Winnicott’s description of the spatula game (in The Observation of Infants in a Set Situation’, 1941) and of the profound significance of his perception of ‘the infant’s spontaneous gesture’ for the development of the personality and the ability to relate to others (cf. ‘Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self, 1960).
