| Summary: | "In the practice of direct psychoanalytic psychiatry, we have been looking for the origins of neurosis and psychosis. We have traced these origins, through the manifest behavior which we observe, to the individual's infantile experiences with his mother. From there, our attention has been drawn to the whole "early maternal environment," and to what it includes--from the infant's point of view--as he experiences it. We now understand that this "early maternal environment" includes not only the mother herself, but also a great variety of literal and symbolic substitutes for her. The present paper will be more concerned with theory than with treatment. We are taking this occasion to state our current views on the whole subject of the "early maternal environment." We will try to bring together, here, the major considerations which have led us to our understanding of it; and we will try to show how the "early maternal environment" concept can illuminate the origins, the progress, and the symbolic content of neurosis and psychosis. We will say relatively little, here, about the more technical aspects of treatment; but we will be referring to clinical experience as a source of documentation of our views, and we will touch upon what might be called the "philosophy" of treatment as the direct psychoanalyst understands it"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
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