ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two cases of early feeding difficulties. It discusses some conditions in which early feeding problems, variations in appetite, or decreased emotional availability for feeding seem to escalate into an anti-growth cycle within the parent-infant relationship. As in a vicious circle, such feeding problems may evoke massive parental anxiety, interfering significantly with the quality of the feeding experience. This may even lead to persistent food refusal by the infant, which, in turn, intensifies parental despair. Psychoanalytic infant observation was used as a basic tool for understanding the relationships involved and the presenting problem. Faruk seemed to lack awareness of the distinctive complementary roles in a feeding situation, having little sense of a parental object who feeds and with whom he can firmly connect. The persistence of Faruk's and Shereen's difficulties were certainly influenced by the lack of outside support for their mothers, making it more difficult for the cycle of depression and parental self-depreciation to be interrupted.
