Infancy—Systems/Behavioral Models

1. Infancy—Systems/Behavioral Models • Subject of study—mother/infant dyad • Infant and mother are equal participants in interaction • Focus of study—how each member of dyad influences other member

2. Contrasts with Organismic/Psychoanalytic Models • Infant’s subjective experience not important—only behavioral manifestations • Infant accurately apprehends reality and real aspects of mother • Mother, therefore, has a real influence on infant (Bowlby as Klein’s supervisee) • One-person versus two-person model—both members of dyad are equally responsible for construction of shared reality • Implications for interactions between couples • Implications for interactions between patient and therapist • Absence of aggressive, sexual drives

3. Stern’s Model of the Origins of Infant Psychopathology • The first relationship—to mom—is prototype for all future relationships • Successful mother-infant interaction—affect regulation • Based on mother’s ability to interpret optimal levels of infant arousal • Based on infant’s threshold of stimulation and organization of affect • Based on mutual ability to negotiate a meaningful, shared dialogue (goal-correctedness)

4. Failure of affect regulation • Maternal overstimulation/infant hyperarousal • No opportunity to regulate flow of affective information and thus feel in control of external or internal world • Contingently overstimulating mothers • Noncontingently overstimulating mothers (“better to respond badly than to be nonresponsive”) • Effects on infant • Dissociating—splitting all perception • Motoric inhibition (“going limp”) • Infant exceptionally sensitive to stimuli (e.g., drug-exposed infants) • Severely protective behaviors • Withdrawing behaviors

5. Maternal understimulation/infant hypoarousal • Incompetence in performing stimulating behaviors that produce optimal levels of arousal • Interferences in performing these behaviors (e.g., depression) • Mothers who feel rejected and in turn reject the infant (under or overstimulating?) • Effects on infant—feeling that infant cannot control external world or internal state • Infant exceptionally insensitive to stimuli—mother must work harder

6. Paradoxical stimulation • Stimulating only at times when infant is in pain or danger • Mother’s interest becomes associated with self-inflicted pain • Origins of sado-masochism • Avoiding full contact and full disengagement • Engagement and disengagement are prototypes for attachment and separation later in development

7. Bowlby/Ainsworth’s Model of the Origins of Infant Psychopathology • Evolutionary theory—mother and infant try to maximize protection (stimulated by fear, fatigue, or sickness) from external danger through two behaviors • Proximity-seeking • Contact-maintenance • Outcomes when survival is threatened through caregiver unavailability • Anxiety • Anger • Disbelief at loss • Searching for reunion • Detachment

8. Homeostasis (regulation) of feelings of security • Physiological control systems—anxiety, anger, searching • Environmental control systems—emotional availability • Failures in secure attachment • Attachment behavior de-activated—defensive exclusion (avoidant infants) • Interference with loving and being loved because fear of rejection • “False self” or narcissism develops

9. Attachment behavior hyper-activated (resistant/ambivalent infants) • Inconsistency in mother’s availability and responsiveness • Preoccupation and intense anger develops (BPD?) • Implications: Developmental pathways to clinical depression (Brown & Harris, 1978) • Severe current adverse event—personal loss or disappointment • Absence of companion in whom to confide (secure 6 age) • Difficult living conditions—feelings of insecurity • Loss of mother before age 11

10. Other developmental outcomes • Avoidant infants • Aggressive toward peers • Noncompliant • Avoidant • Ambivalent infants • Easily frustrated • Not persistent • Not competent

11. Developmental Sequences in Other Populations (DS, Maltreatment) • DS infants proceed through same developmental sequences but at slower rate—integration of ecological self is difficult • Linguistic representations of self are less mature and differentiated • Ecological self is intact—able to perceive nature of relationship between the person and environment

12. Maltreated infants develop self differently • Self-recognition accompanied by negative affect (shameful or bad feelings about self) • Internal state language less mature, less elaborated, less able to discuss internal states of self and other, less able to discuss negative internal states (“false self”)