The pioneering contribution to infant psychology that gave us separation and individuation documents with standard-setting care the intrapsychic process of a child's emergence from symbiotic fusion with the mother toward affirmation of his own psychological birth. Available for the first time in paperback to a new generation of students and clinicians on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its original publication.

'The biological birth of the human infant and the psychological birth of the individual are not coincident in time. The former is a dramatic, observable, and well-circumscribed event; the latter a slowly unfolding intra psychic process.'Thus begins this highly acclaimed book in which the author and her collaborators break new ground in developmental psychology and present the first complete theoretical statement of the author's observations on the normal separation-individuation process. Separation and individuation are presented in this major work as two complementary developments. Separation is described as the child's emergence from a symbiotic fusion with the mother, while individuation consists of those achievements making the child's assumption of his own individual characteristics. Each of the sub-phases of separation-individuation is described in detail, supported by a wealth of clinical observations which trace the tasks confronting the infant and his mother as he progresses towards achieving his own individuality.

A collection of the papers of Margaret S. Mahler, providing an exposition of the development of Mahler's essential concepts.

In this important new book, the noted theoretician Fred Pine provides a synthesis of the four conceptual domains of psychoanalysis: drives, ego functioning, object relations, and self experience. He argues that a focus on the clinical phenomena themselves, and not on the theoretical edifices built around them, readily illuminates the inevitable integration of the several sets of phenomena in each person's unique psychological organization. With superb clarity, Pine shows how one or another or more of these becomes central to a particular individual's psychopathology. Drawing on a wealth of detailed clinical material -- brief vignettes, process notes of sessions, and full analyses -- he vividly demonstrates how a broad multimodel perspective enhances the treatment process, and is, in fact, its natural form. He also applies these ideas to such crucial clinical issues as preoedipal pathology and ego defect, the so-called symbiotic phase, and the mutative factors in treatment. Conceptually elegant and immensely practical, this highly original work is certain to be, in the words of Arnold Cooper, "a guide for theorists and clinicians for many years to come."

This book attempts to create a dialogue between the infant as revealed by the experimental approach and as clinically reconstructed, in the service of resolving the contradiction between theory and reality. It describes the several ways that organization can form in the infant's mind.