ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author addresses the manifestation of separation anxieties in several small children from different families, all referred to the Tavistock Under Fives Service. He shows that several cases of separation anxiety, the permutations of the child’s symptoms varied greatly and were closely related to the degree of hope experienced by the child. The author feels that he was in the presence of a “good-enough” setting. The realities of separation are part of all social relationships, including the earliest mother–infant bond. The newborn depends on the mother’s nurturing presence, but, being out of the womb and in the world, he is bound also to experience normal gaps in her care. E. O’Shaughnessy notes that: “The feeding infant does not have an association with the breast, like a strictly business association. He has a relationship to it, which spans absence and presence, which goes beyond the physical presence of the breast to the breast in its absence”.
