[Developmental psychopathology and psychoanalysis]

Abstract

In face of the apparent contradiction between psychoanalysis and observational-experimental methods, the author briefly summarizes the input of direct observation to the knowledge of child development and suggests that the reservations of many psychoanalysts to these methods may be explained by the greater importance given to external events in such research, as if the causal role of fantasy was thus being questioned. The author further reviews most recent experimental works, particularly those around the concepts of "competence of the infant", "self", "attachment and security", and suggests that the main object of these research endeavors more and more concerns the foundations and origins of the child's fantasy life. Other recent experimental works bring out the continuity between the observations made during the first year of the child's life and those made of these children now up to the age of six. The author comes to the conclusion that the whole of these observational and experimental works, far from contradicting psychoanalytic hypotheses based on reconstruction, confirms institutions and hypotheses which have become essential to psychoanalysis, particularly concerning the importance of the child's first year of life and of mother-child interaction.