Stranger Anxiety: When Children Face Strangers

Abstract

Till about seven months, the baby mostly flees from contact with strangers, often avoiding eye-contact without the parent’s awareness. A reaction of resistance and anxiety when approached by a stranger is commonly seen around eight months. In this paper I explore this emotional responding in the context of a novel re-conceptualization of healthy narcissism processing as an emotional immune system. Whereas recent discussions in the literature have focused on the anxiety reaction, I propose that key to understanding this commonplace phenomenon is the understanding of how healthy narcissism works to safeguard that which is familiar and resist that which is strange. The operation of these psychic processes may be likened to those of the biological immune system, which safeguard the familiar codes of the body and repel alien invaders. In safeguarding that which is familiar and repelling the alien, healthy narcissism operates as an emotional immune system. It is promoted by good-enough attachments (object relations) characterized by our being loved the way we are (true self), in separateness and not according to someone else’s blueprint (false self), one that risks invading our familiar self. The more we are loved for who we truly are, our self-integrity is more immune to invaders, and throughout our lifespan, we are more immune to alien influences, and to the incursions of others’ hurtful words and deeds. Healthy narcissism is thus understood as providing, from birth, emotional immunity to our sense of self-familiarity. We come to recognize ourselves and the partners of our various relationships via continually being alerted to and subsequently resisting or rejecting strangers/strangeness (i.e., invaders), and by gradually tolerating and even befriending the otherness. Befriending is possible when we are able to discover some familiarity embedded within the stranger. The appearance of eight-month resistance/anxiety, a normal alertness to strangers, signals that the baby has a rudimentary sense of both self and object constancy and is able to differentiate between his familiar “not-I,” such as the parent/caregiver whom he experiences as familiar and is attached to, and the unfamiliar “not-I” stranger. The parent/caregiver is then experienced as a bridge between that which is familiar and that which is strange and anxiety-provoking/overwhelming. Parents’ reactions to the “not-I” (of their baby) can help the infant differentiate between a “not-I” he might befriend, and one that is best avoided. The normal emotional immune reaction reflects a good-enough balance between preserving the familiar and true self, and befriending the otherness, to which one remains appropriately but not excessively alert.