
on early infantile psychosis.
the symbiotic and autistic syndromes
in conclusion, i wish to state that the
core of child psychosis must
be sought in one or the other of the
described distortions of the sym-
biotic phase.  in the first case, what lay
at the heart of the psychotic dis-
turbance was the marked emotional
unavailability of the mother,
which alternated with a purely physical
extreme closeness during the
breast-feeding situations, and particularly
with the destructiveness of
the mother's unpredictable rage attacks.
the contrasting experiences
drove the child to the autistic warding
off of any human contact and
the de-animation of the world of reality.
constitutional factors could
not, in this case, be evaluated with any
degree of accuracy.
in the second case, it was, by contrast,
the mother's ever-presence
that created an unendurable instrusion
upon and interference with
the structuralization of the budding ego,
which constitutionally and
perhaps predispositionally may have been
very vulnerable.  this made
it impossible for the infant to experience
the normal alternation of
the gratification-frustration sequences at
his own pace; it also made
the process of individuation in the
separation-individuation period
one which was beset with abysmal panic.
in both instances, we can see that it was
primarily in the severe dis-
tortions of the normal symbiosis that the
child psychosis had its roots.
