ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of stranger anxiety observed and written about by Rene Spitz, with whose name the concept is indissolubly linked. There is a detailed examination of the function of the self-object dialogue, and the role of the dialogue one has with one's own self in providing affective sustenance—in particular, feelings of reassurance and security. The chapter provides clinical material from an adult psychoanalytic case to demonstrate a striking correspondence between an adult mode of functioning and the "stranger anxiety" of the infant. Perhaps of special interest are the technical implications of viewing a particular type of anxiety in an adult patient as paralleling stranger anxiety. In his developmental theory Spitz lays much emphasis on what he has called "the dialogue"—the interaction and mutual responsiveness to cues—which occurs between the infant and his mother.
