Mother-Child Relations

Of all the theories purporting to uncover the roots of childhood behaviour and its extension into adult behaviour, the most cogent relates to the physical and psychological bonds of attachment between infant and mother. It is helpful to divide the human lifespan into three periods, each of which has alternating phases of attachment and detachment.

BACKGROUND: A significant association between parental PTSD and the occurrence of PTSD in offspring has been noted, consistent with the idea that risk for the development of PTSD is transmitted from parent to child. Two recent reports linking maternal PTSD and low offspring cortisol prompted us to examine the relative contributions of maternal vs. paternal PTSD in the prediction of PTSD and other psychiatric diagnoses in offspring.

Early brain development has a tremendous impact on the success of humans throughout their lives. During early development, neural circuit formation proceeds in a strictly regulated manner. In addition to genetic and epigenetic programs, recent studies using animal models have demonstrated that certain maternal bio-active agents are essential for normal neural development, with deficiencies adversely affecting offspring brain function and behavior.

This paper is written from a psychodynamic clinician's perspective, juxtaposing a psychoanalytic-attachment model of depression with recent developments in neuroscience. Three main components of the attachment approach are described: the role of loss, of childhood trauma predisposing to depression in later life, and failure of co-regulation of role of primitive emotions, such as fear, despair, and helplessness. Blatt's distinction between anaclitic and introjective depression is delineated and related to hyper- and de-activation of the attachment dynamic.

BACKGROUND: Mothers' self-reported stroking of their infants over the first weeks of life modifies the association between prenatal depression and physiological and emotional reactivity at 7 months, consistent with animal studies of the effects of tactile stimulation. We now investigate whether the effects of maternal stroking persist to 2.5 years. Given animal and human evidence for sex differences in the effects of prenatal stress we compare associations in boys and girls.

BACKGROUND: There is debate as to whether maternal tobacco use in pregnancy is related to offspring behaviour later on. We tested this association examining multiple aspects of children's behaviour at age 5 and accounting for parental smoking outside of pregnancy, as well as child and family characteristics. METHODS: Data come from a prospective community based birth cohort study (EDEN; n=1113 families in France followed since pregnancy in 2003-2005 until the child's 5th birthday). Maternal tobacco use in pregnancy was self-reported.

This article documents the historical factors that led to shifts in mission work toward a greater emphasis on community health for the poor and most vulnerable of society in sub-Saharan Africa after 1945. Using the example of the Medical Mission Sisters from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and their work in Ghana, we challenge the conventional narrative of medical missions as agents of imperialism.

The development of narcissism is usually studied from the standpoint of the drives, or more specifically of the libido. This paper considers narcissism from the standpoint of the ego and seeks to delineate separate developmental lines. From this point of view, a variety of forms may be distinguished which are ordinarily structured during the oedipal period. It is postulated that narcissism cannot be considered as truly separable from the vicissitudes of the love and hate of objects.

The clinical features of depressive illnesses in five boys aged 14 and 15 years are described. The early stages of the illnesses were not noticed by others. Each made serious suicide attempts which resulted in their hospitalization. After this, a depressive state was revealed in each case, which in its depth and persistence was very similar to the major depressive illnesses of adults. Aetiological factors are discussed.

The symbiotic phase of development is crucially involved in determing the nature of psychopathology as well as promoting psychic processes that are involved in creative activity and intimate object relationships. In a well-established object relationship, the partners relate to each other in a symbiotic fashion. From the analysis of married persons (and some clinical material is presented in this paper), the author concludes that the fundamental character structure, psychopathological or otherwise, of each spouse is identical.