{"title":"Attachment, loss and rediscovery.","authors":"G E Vaillant","doi":"","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper suggests that separation and loss in early childhood may be less critical to later life than some people believe. Rather, internalization--after as well as before, age five--may be a developmental process to which psychotherapists need to pay particular attention. By attending to our patient's experiences of separation and loss, we allow them a metaphor, a language, with which they can describe the vicissitudes of lasting attachments. Similarly, the separation/individuation process of infancy, popularized by Klein and Mahler, is important, not just because it describes the biosocial fact of preverbal infancy but because it draws our attention to a metaphor that describes the struggle for identity that characterizes young adulthood.</p>","PeriodicalId":77808,"journal":{"name":"The Hillside journal of clinical psychiatry","volume":"10 2","pages":"148-64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"1988-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Hillside journal of clinical psychiatry","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper suggests that separation and loss in early childhood may be less critical to later life than some people believe. Rather, internalization--after as well as before, age five--may be a developmental process to which psychotherapists need to pay particular attention. By attending to our patient's experiences of separation and loss, we allow them a metaphor, a language, with which they can describe the vicissitudes of lasting attachments. Similarly, the separation/individuation process of infancy, popularized by Klein and Mahler, is important, not just because it describes the biosocial fact of preverbal infancy but because it draws our attention to a metaphor that describes the struggle for identity that characterizes young adulthood.