Subjectivity, intentionality, and the emergence of reality testing in early infancy.

Abstract

The peek-a-boo behavior of a young infant is used to illustrate early processes of intentionality and reality testing. Based on the observations made in this study, as well as findings from similar studies of face-to-face behavior in infants, a general paradigm of cyclical engagementdisengagement of objects on the part of infants is described and discussed. Observations of the transfer of engagement-disengagement behavior on the part of the infant from oral to visual modalities are presented. The observations are discussed from a psychoanalytic object-relational standpoint with integrations of cognitive theory. Implications for an emerging subjectivity in the infant are briefly addressed.

The origin of the symbiotic wish.

“…From neonancy, the prerepresentational infant possesses a well documented repertoire of social orienting and social organizing behaviors which, in momentary but increasingly sustained ways, facilitate the infant’s acquisition of predictable (i.e., reliable) ways of engaging others (Field & Fox, 1985; Horner, 1985a; Horner & Carlson, 1985; Horner & Chethik, 1986; see also Tronick, 1982). They constitute the foundation of the genuine social initiative and intentionality that seem to characterize the contact-seeking of infants 4 months and older (Horner, 1985a).…”

Conversation attentiveness and following in 12- and 18-week-old infants

“…In a case study of the early development of socially embedded attention in an infant between 11-17 weeks (Horner, 1985), the complex attentionalbehavioral capacities of this period were illustrated. These capacities entail voluntary behavioral devices that engage the mother and absorb her interest.…”

The psychic life of the young infant: Review and critique of the psychoanalytic concepts of symbiosis and infantile omnipotence.

“…Recent observations of pat terned visual-behavioral interests (pre-peek-a-boo-activity) made between 6Y2-17 weeks of an infant's develop ment have suggested the ability to make external /internal representational dis tinctions. 68 Very young infants prove capable of face-to-face engagements, and they are equipped as organisms to register the textural and spatial information that is required to make such representations at neurophysiological levels. It is likely, underlying my comments about the 0-3-month-old infant is not that the infants are visually drawn to (and visually alert to) the "faceness" of the parent but that they are alert to the fac ialfeature s of the parent.…”

“…Most clinicians accept the proposition that there is at least a rudimentary phenomenology of infancy—that infants feel and experience events in their day-to-day lives. Adults, particularly those who are involved in everyday contacts with infants, act as though there is a subjective domain, and there are processes by which adults, particularly primary caregivers, act selectively according to their understanding of the infant's subjectivity 12, 68, 77, 105 . Not everyone, however, would agree as to how the infant's subjective world is organized, nor would there be agreement as to the content of that subjectivity.…”