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Margaret Mahler’s separation-individuation theory is a monumental contribution to our understanding of the emergence of the human infant from a relatively undifferentiated psychological state at birth to that of a complex sophisticated person at age three ; an individual who has a clear sense of self and other and possesses the ability to interact in the external and intrapsychic worlds with multiple objects. Fortunately, she and her colleagues did not stop there. They also recognized that the process of separation-individuation was life long, profoundly affecting every phase of development throughout the lift cycle. This theme was elaborated for the first time by three coordinated panels at American Psychoanalytic Association meetings in the early 1970’s. The following quote loom the panel on infancy and childhood by reporter Muriel C. Winestine(1973) provides a set of hypotheses which in a broad sense outline the subject matter of my paper and the topic of this symposium. "The growing-away process is a lifelong separation-individuation process, since in herent in every new step of independent functioning is a minimal threat of object loss. Consciousness of self and absorption without awareness of self are the two polarities between which we move, with varying ease and with varying degrees of alternation or simultaneity. This development takes place in relation to a) the infant’s own body : and b) to the principal representative of the world as the infant’s experiences it-namely, the primary love object. As is the case with any intrapsychic process, this one reverberates throughout the life cycle, and new phases of the life cycle witness new derivatives of the earliest process still at work." It is important to recognize that adult separation-individuation processes are not a replication of the infant and toddler’s experience. That is impossible. John Munder Ross(1994) expressed the difference between the two as follows : "Whatever its elasticity, it is not the more self representation that is being organized [in adulthood] but the more variegated and permeable layer of self closer to and more responsive to the social surround. The … ego identity achieved in its felt actualization and affirmation are more dynamically affected and volatile in adult lift than this primordial structure laid down in infancy and toddlerhood". These ideas from the 1973 Panels and Dr. Ross are very consistent with the ideas on adult separation-individuation phenomena which Robert Nemiroff and I began to elaborate seventeen years ago in our first paper on adult development entitled "Some Observations and Hypotheses About the Psycho-Analytic Theory of Adult Development" (1979). While discussing Hypothesis Ⅳ, The fundamental developmental issues of childhood continue as central aspects of adult life but in altered form", we commented on the seminal 1973 panels as follows: "Margaret Mahler (Winestine 1973) described separation-individuation as a lifelong process because of the inherent threat of object loss in every stage of independence. The absolute dependence on the mother which is a characteristic of infancy becomes a relative dependence in later life. Leo Spiegel(Marcos 1973) did not equate self-object constancy with full maturity. He defined this goal, only partially realized even in the healthy adult, as ’object’ independence. Namely, the recognition of the object in its own right without reference to the self ; the recognition that both self and object have independence. What Speigel is describing, we believe, is the transformation of an infantile theme into an adult one. Other authors(Steinschein 1973) affect-laden junctures such as marriage, parenthood, grandparenthood, the climacteric, retirement and senescence. In presenting our Hypothesis Ⅶ-"A central, phase-specific theme of adult development is the normative crisis precipitated by the recognition and acceptance of the finiteness of time and the inevitability of personal death" - we addressed a central theme which effects separation-individuation phenomena in midlife. "The death of parents, friends and contemporaries must be dealt with. The death of parents in particular leads to a loosening of childhood introjects which has as a central component the internalization of a sense of unending continuance and security, provided in childhood by the good enough parent. One is left alone with the recognition that he will die as his parents did. The death of a parent is a major change in an adult’s life, bringing with it the opportunity for profound internal reorganization, including increased separation-individuation, funker resolution of the Oedipal complex and a new or altered relationship with the remaining parent". My interest in separation-individuation phenomena in adulthood has remained constant over the years. I recently addressed the subject in a paper published in the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child in 1990 entitled "The Third Individuation : The Effect of Biological Parenthood on Separation-individuation Processes in Adulthood." In it Idescribed the continuous process of elaboration of self and differentiation from objects which occurs in young adulthood, focusing in particular on involvements with children, spouse, and parents, i.e., the family, the same psychological constellation that shaped the first(Mahler) and second(Blos) individuations.
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