ABSTRACT

Chapter 17 centres on theoreticians after Freud: Klein, Winnicott, Bion, Gaddini, Stern, and Aulagnier. He argues that babies’ anxieties are related to their representations, that is, the anxieties have some kind of content, they are about something. This “something” is intimately affected by, and also influences, the baby’s interactions with the parents. There is thus a traffic of mutual projections between parent and baby, which can either escalate or diminish his anxiety. Still, no author has, and probably never will, give a complete and credible rendition of how an infant experiences distress. Especially by bringing in the theories of Gaddini and Aulagnier, he provides material for further discussions of this intriguing topic.