ABSTRACT
The question has been posed: should the phrase be “maternal deprivation” or “maternal privation”? I think that the defining point concerns whether the child has ever experienced the full benefit of mother’s love during his childhood and adolescence. Deprivation is surely, by definition, the removal or loss of a quality that one had once enjoyed. Can it, therefore, qualify as “deprivation” if the individual was never fortunate enough to enjoy the full extent of motherly love, affection, “attunement” (Stern, 1985) or “holding” (Winnicott, 1965) that securely attached children accept as normal during their childhood? This chapter seeks to answer the question: what exactly do we mean by the term “maternal deprivation”?
