The Earliest Relationship: Parents, Infants and the Drama of Early Attachment - Book Review
From Volume 29 Number 1
Virginia L. Whitener, Ph.D.
BOOK REVIEW
The Earliest Relationship: Parents, Infants and the Drama of Early Attachment by T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. and Bertrand G. Cramer, M.D., Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1990, 252 pages, hardcover, $19.95.
Brazelton and Cramer's The Earliest Relationship is a gold mine. Much of its value comes from detailed case studies based on sensitive observations of infants and children. This quality of observation has been all too rare in the general clinical literature of infants, children, and their current-day relationships with their parents. The authors' accurate observations and descriptions of infants and parents as they work through problems in the parent child relationship are a valuable contribution to orgonomic knowledge.
The authors observe, as did Reich, a fact regrettably neglected by others - namely, that emotional problems do occur in infancy. They also observe that these problems have specific causes, causes that arise from disturbances in the relationship between parent and infant. Although they couch their observations in psychological rather than bioenergtic language, their findings point to the fact that the problems of infants arise from disturbances in contact. These disturbances occur in the parents and the infant and escalate in a circular fa hion in the relationship that exists between them. Brazelton and Cramer's detailed descriptions show that these disturbances take very specific forms. One can see in their cases that each infant has, from the earliest age, a very individual makeup. This makeup interacts with the parents' specific disturbance in contact: "The combined forces of the infants' makeup and of the parents reactions and fantasies interact with each other in continuous feedback."(p.169)
Brazelton and Cramer discuss problems in academia's current training of professionals which tends to attribute infants' problems to physical rather than behavioral sources.
focus on pathology (ignoring positive forces in families which can be called upon in addressing problems).
treat either the child or mother (rather than both together).
exclude infants when exploring or treating family dynamics.
The end result is that professionals either minimize or neglect the maladaptive patterns of development and the pathology contained in infants' symptoms. In particular, Brazelton and Cramer point out that "the powerful impact of unconscious forces, especially parental fantasies about children" (p.168) are underestimated. Much of the book is devoted to discussing, categorizing, and demonstrating avenues of unconscious influence that shape the symptoms of infants and parents and future development.
The significance of intervention in the early interaction between infant and mother is also discussed by the authors. This was an issue of great importance to Reich, who stressed the concept of clinics for mothers-to-be and for mothers and infants(!). As did Reich, Brazelton and Cramer demonstrate the possibility and value of ameliorating early severe problems. They also emphasize the prophylactic effect of addressing less pathological problems early in infancy to prevent them from becoming more serious.
In Part Five of The Earliest Relationship nine cases of infants with problems, their mothers, the patterns of interaction and the therapeutic interventions made with these dyads are described in a clear, caring, and readable fashion. Thus the significance of parental distortion of perception of the infant is made accessible to the lay public and professional alike. If no other part of the book is read, this alone would be an inspiring and informative experience. The case studies show how therapeutic intervention restores emotional concordance between parent and infant. This is accomplished in the course of parent-therapist interaction as past unresolved conflicts are identified. As this happens, there is an increased awareness of the associated painful emotions which have been avoided and which have led to counter-productive attitudes in the present. A key element in this therapeutic process is the reemergence of emotion and its expression by the parent, who is then able to perceive the infant more realistically.
When the authors speak of and uncover emotions which have been bound in pathological patterns of interaction and which are released as these patterns are pointed out to the parent, they clearly go be yond education and are dealing with what orgonomists define as armor.1 Brazelton and Cramer may not be familiar with the concept of armoring. However, in looking at pathological dynamics, they are addressing manifestations of armor: blocked, distorted perception and acting out of destructive impulses.
They refer to the terms "projection" and "meaning-attribution" to describe ways parents transfer their own feelings and images onto infants. "When projections are massive, disregarding the specific in dividuality of the other, the distortion of reality interferes with relationships. This is particularly true when hostile and aggressive aspects of the self are projected." (p.135) Brazelton and Cramer state there are adaptive and destructive (positive and negative) aspects of this: parents may endow the infant with valued characteristics and reward and love the infant for "any behavior that confirms this positive image" or, conversely, "in pathological projections ... parents en dow a baby with characteristics that are totally at odds with the baby's nature: the baby is seen as having well-defined intentions or...adult characteristics, or even... supernatural forces." (p.135) The degree and nature of these "pathological projections" may obliterate the infant's individuality or the parents' capacity to recognize it. Accord ing to the authors, in healthier situations infants are seen as a "composite of feelings and thoughts projected onto them... Yet at the same time parents remain able to 'read' their children objectively." (p.136) The authors demonstrate how the words parents use to describe their infant, especially their infant's problems, may later come up in descriptions of their own history. The meaning attributed to the child's behavior may then start to make sense to the listening professional. "Ghosts in the nursery," a phrase first used by Selma Fraiberg in 1980, is one category of parental dysfunction described by Brazelton and Cramer. Rather than the infant fleetingly reminding the parents of someone from their past, the parents more dramatically repeat and replicate their history and project some particular person from their past onto their infant. These "ghosts" may establish "residence at the baby's side attracting most of the parent's attention... In such situations parents relate to the ghost who is interposed - like a screen between themselves and the child."(p.139) This interferes with the parent "seeing" the infant, confuses and distorts present parent-child interactions, and allows past conflicts unrelated to the infant to be "projected" anew. The fantasies placed on the infant may assume a reality for the parents and it may become the infant's role (and subsequently that of the child and then the adult) to give this "ghost" life. This robs the child of individuality and sets in motion a cycle of inter action that ensures that certain fantasized attributes, either dreaded or hoped for by parents, are actually enacted.
Brazelton and Cramer's descriptive observations of the disturbing misconnection between parents and infants is of relevance to orgonomy because of the depth of their observations and the seriousness with which they address this cradle of human misery. By focusing on parent-infant dynamics, they hold a magnifying glass to one specific aspect of how neurosis is passed on and how new life is thwarted.
Specific familiar problems in infant care are also examined. These include fear of an infant dying, overfeeding, battling over food, and disturbances of sleeping (which may result from active disruption of the infant's sleep by the parent(s) ostensibly checking on the infant's well-being). All of these problems are described in terms of how they reflect different forms of parental fantasy and projection - ways of allowing the parent to continue "contact" with past absent or frustrating parents or siblings.
Brazelton and Cramer point out that parents who were themselves raised by "strict" parents may be unable or unwilling to impose rational limits on their child and may not allow the child to experience legitimate distress. This situation is viewed by the authors as "evocation of the past through its opposite." Another common problem, trying to create an "ideal" relationship with the infant, is described as a destructive attempt to repair a painful childhood which will inevitably include the acting out of past negative emotion.
Also discussed is the "disappointing" infant, the infant who "far from sustaining the parents' self-esteem becomes a source of disillusionment."(p.160) Passivity, which could be an actual attribute of a baby's nature, may be negatively (and wrongly) labeled as laziness or excessive dependency, or overreacted to by the parents if not tolerated in themselves. Critical attitudes condemning infant and self, with devastating consequences, may ensue.
The theoretical framework and understanding as presented in The Earliest Relationship seem less clear. Some important distinctions are missed. For example, they discuss what they consider to be an adaptive aspect of "projection" when parents "endow the infant with valued characteristics and reward and love the infant for 'any behavior that confirms this positive image." If this "projection" comes from the parents making contact with the biophysical basis of the infant's characteristics within themselves, then it is not projection at all but something much deeper. It is the parents' orgonotic contact with the infant. Because Brazelton and Cramer do not have access to the orgonomic understanding of contact, they psychologize and pathologize (however benignly) what is a healthy biophysical phenomenon. In other situations, endowing the infant with a positive characteristic the parents value but which is not an essential aspect of the infant's own nature, may appear to be a positive form of "projection." It is not. In such a case contact is amiss and the "reward[s] and love" they bestow on the infant, no matter how positive in appearance, interfere with the parents providing for the infant's actual emotional needs. (See the Case Presentation starting on p. 72, "The Child as the Presenting Symptom of a Parent's Illness," in this issue of the Journal.)
Contact, the sine qua non of relationships, identified and studied by Reich, Baker, and other medical orgonomists, is the central issue of Brazelton's invaluable theoretical and clinical work. Like the orgonomist, Brazelton, using different words, is concerned with con tact and whatever inhibits, prevents, shatters, or distorts direct perception and emotional connection between parent and infant. It is this connection, bioenergetic contact, that promotes growth and healthy development. First and foremost, however, in both parent and infant, it allows and excites movement from the core: love. To quote Dr. Baker, "Love is an expression of full contact."(2:68)
REFERENCES
Reich, W. Children of the Future. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983.
Baker, E.F. Man· in the Trap. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
Armoring blocks an individual's contact with feelings. Because of this, perception is distorted. As armor, especially ocular armor, is dissolved in orgonomic treatment, emotions emerge and perception becomes more objective.
Armoring blocks an individual's contact with feelings. Because of this, perception is distorted. As armor, especially ocular armor, is dissolved in orgonomic treatment, emotions emerge and perception becomes more objective.
Great observations. This passage stands out: "the parents making contact with the biophysical basis of the infant's characteristics within themselves, then it is not projection at all but something much deeper. It is the parents' orgonotic contact with the infant" stands.
During birth and from newborns to infants , I think the unarmored healthy expressions, especially face and eye and limb and breathing expressions seen in wonderful unarmored newborns, can be protected from contractions that lead to armor by this very phenomenon..a level of gentleness and sensitivity in the physician and adult caretaker....to everything from physical touch to lighting and sound environments, voice, eye contact, etc.; that comes from a kind of sense memory of what it was like to be in that little young persons shoes, as we all were,"making contact with the biophysical basis of the infant's characteristics" ...Bravo!