ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that parents are particularly susceptible to revival of the ‘wild’ unprocessed residues of their own infancy and early childhood, evoked by exposure to equivalent raw emotions in their babies. If a parent is too susceptible to the unprocessed wild things called up inside by the baby’s messiness, neediness, anguish or ‘greed’, she can no longer function effectively in helping the infant transform these into manageable emotions. The chapter shows that the threat to personal boundaries begins earlier, during pregnancy, when the expectant mother’s body has actually incorporated another and distinctions between ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ are at risk as delineations between past and future, self and other, conscious and unconscious, order and chaos, fact and fantasy become more fluid. As primary carer in continuous contact with her baby, she lacks the psychic space and time to restore her own emotional balance and is at risk of becoming overwhelmed by the heightened emotions aroused in her.
