Clinical Social Work J o u r n a l

Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 1989

THE M A G I C Y E A R S R E V I S I T E D

Joseph Palombo, M.A.

ABSTRACT: T a k i n g as its s t a r t i n g point S e l m a F r a i b e r g ' s book, The Magic

Years, this p a p e r p r e s e n t s a critique of t r a d i t i o n a l psychoanalytic developmen-
t a l theory. A contrast is drawn with some of the findings of current research on
infancy, and an outline is suggested for the foundations of a developmental the-
ory that would be consistent with the tenets of self psychology.

INTRODUCTION

Recently I had reason to reread Selma Fraiberg's (1954) book The

Magic Years, a book which was once considered a classic on child devel-
opment from a psychoanalytic perspective. It became evident why the
book had been so popular. Fraiberg's writing style is magical and en-
chanting. Using little jargon she was able to convey directly m a n y of
the complex notions t h a t existed in those days. She had integrated the
concepts so thoroughly t h a t she could render them in a lucid, personal,
and easily comprehensible, even commonsensical, manner. It was as
though she were telling parents t h a t with the help of psychoanalytic un-
derstanding all the puzzles of development could be solved. There were
no great mysteries to children's actions or motivations. The bright light
of Freud's t h i n k i n g could illuminate even the most obscure of children's
behaviors.
In the years since its publication major changes have occurred in
our t h i n k i n g about child development. In this paper I would like to
trace some of the reasons for the shifts and to consider the consequences
of the movement away from her conceptualizations. I will present a
s u m m a r y of some of the major concepts dominant, in her day, adding
certain concepts t h a t followed. I will t h e n contrast these with some of

This address was originally given at the annual Lois Wildy Child Welfare Lecture,
Children's Home & Aid Society, November 4, 1987.

9 9 [ 9 8 9 H u m a n Sciences Press
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the findings of current day researchers on infancy, and finally outline a

proposal for a developmental theory that is consistent with the tenets of
self psychology.

I. THE CLASSICAL VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT

Fraiberg begins by explaining that the reference to the "magic

years" in the title of the book is not to the fact that she believes the first
six years of life are magical or are years of enchantment. That view of
childhood, she feels, is a projection by adults of their own illusions.
Rather, the magic refers to children's belief in their own magical pow-
ers, in their sense of omnipotence. Although much has changed in the
theories she held, interestingly this is one of the major concepts that has
endured relatively unchanged to this day.
Following Freud, she views mental health as consisting in the bal-
ance between h u m a n urges and egocentric wishes on the one hand, and
the demands of society and of conscience on the other (p. 7). Therein lies
one of Freud's fundamental tenets. The sexual and aggressive drives are
the fundamental driving forces for all of h u m a n behavior. H u m a n be-
ings are born with untamed instinctual forces that push for discharge.
Society's role is to tame those forces, and to transform them into ener-
gies that are usable for constructive purposes. Fraiberg's metaphor to
explain the child rearing role of parents was to liken them to mission-
aries bringing civilization to unsocialized natives.
A major tenet concerned the existence and nature of these inborn
drives, a tenet to which some clinicians continue to subscribe. Children
are to be understood as "energy processing" creatures (Lichtenberg,
1983) whose urges to discharge m a k e s them subject to their impulses,
and hence to the pleasure principle. They are incapable of delaying the
discharge of their urges. The primary aim of the organism is to reduce
the buildup of tension that results from the constant pressure from the
drives. Furthermore, each child is born with a fixed and immutable
quantity of libidinal and aggressive energy. This energy is at first di-
rected toward the self, resulting in a narcissistic state or a state of pri-
mary masochism. Slowly, as the caregiver provides gratification in the
form of nurturance, the libidinal energy is transferred to that caregiver,
and a cathexis follows. The attachment to caregivers results from the
satisfaction of the instinctual drives.
The libidinal drives follow a prescribed form of expression, and un-
fold in a predictable sequence, the sequence being the familiar one of
the oral, anal, phallic/oedipal phases. The issues which each child faces
during these phases are set by the history of the species. The psychic
contents of each phase are also ontogenetically determined.
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JOSEPH PALOMBO

A second major tenet of the theory was that conflict is inherent in

all development. The forces that lead the child to wish to discharge
drives energies are antithetical to the reality the child faces. The de-
mands of society are contrary to the demands of the instincts. Conse-
quently, for a child to move on developmentally, that child has to learn
to postpone the pleasures of discharge, and to find less direct and more
realistic ways of attaining gratification. Since postponement and delay
entails frustration, conflicts which ensue are not readily resolvable.
Every developmental phase, therefore, presents children with a set of
conflicts which have to be resolved before it is possible for them to move
ahead.
Third, the ego is composed of two components: an autonomous com-
ponent which is determined by endowment, and another which is the
result of the neutralization of drives energies. In Fraiberg's day the role
of endowment in child development was minimized or ignored. Hart-
mann's (1964) concept of ego autonomous functions as representing the
contributions of endowment to development is still controversial, and
the role of these functions has never been clearly spelled out. A major
role is given to the ego as activating the defense against the onslaught
of the drives. The defenses serve not only as shields against the more in-
tense drives b u t also as regulators of discharge of drive energies. The
other components of the ego, which represent either drive neutralization
or conflict resolution are those constructed from the identifications the
child makes with parental figures and which eventually constitute the
ego's executive functions.
Fourth, the super-ego, or the conscience, emerges out of the resolu-
tion of the child's oedipal strivings at around the ages of four to six. The
super-ego results from the internalization of the parent prohibitions, es-
pecially those of the father. What begins as the introjection of aspects of
parental relationships becomes consolidated into the superego with the
postponement of the hope for gratification of oedipal desires.
Margaret Mahler (1975) extended Freud's theory of development,
and enriched our understanding of the first three years. While accepting
much of what Freud had said, she proposed organizing the major issues
of the first three years around the problems of separation and individua-
tion. That is, she chose to focus on the task of the formation of the self
and object representations. Her primary assumption is that infants are
born with no sense of identity. Their sense of self is totally fused with
that of the caregiver, and it is only in the course of development that
children develop a sense of their own boundaries and of their own iden-
tities. Development begins with the state of normal autism, from which
infants move to a symbiotic state with the caregiver. A rather lengthy
phase of separation and individuation follows. During this phase they
slowly begin to differentiate as they hatch out of their symbiotic union
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CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK J O U R N A L

with the caregiver. This is followed by the practicing phase which comes
at about the time the child begins to walk, and during which the child
learns to distance from the person to whom he/she is attached. A criti-
cal phase, the rapprochement phase, is next. Here the child essentially
plays out a game in which he/she practices moving away from the care-
giver in the context of an assurance that the caregiver will be there
when he/she returns for refueling. The game of being chased, and of be-
ing playfully pursued is paradigmatic of that phase.
Finally, as the child moves on to the resolution of the separation/
individuation process, he/she enters into the realm of object constancy.
This is the phase during which the sense of self becomes firmly estab-
lished and which prepares the child for the task of dealing with oedipal
issues. The consolidation of the self representation as separate and dis-
tinct from the object representation begins to occur.
A broad range of criticisms have been leveled at these two classical
views of development, largely from within the psychoanalytic commu-
nity, but also from less friendly sources, critical of psychoanalysis al-
together.
Drive theory has been found to be problematic on a number of
counts. First, the notion that infants are energy processing organisms
m a y be true of them as consumers of nourishment but is unfounded psy-
chologically. If this assumption were true, infants would avoid stimula-
tion and would seek to maintain a state of quiescent sleep for the rest of
their lives, a proposition clearly contrary to the facts. All h u m a n moti-
vation would be reduced to the whims of the libidinal and aggressive
drives, thus minimizing the role of other motivational systems in hu-
m a n behavior. Second, the concept of energy was borrowed by Freud
from the physical sciences and used to explain psychological phenom-
ena. Psychical energy is characterized as going through refinements
and transformations that are extraordinary in their complexity. This
analogy with physics fails in many respects. Not only is there no ana-
logue for such energy transformations, but also the notion of psychologi-
cal processes occurring in that manner is totally removed from the sub-
jective experiences they purport to describe. Third, the libidinal drives
are described as going through a fixed developmental sequence. This
sequence is determined not by the environment, but by biogenetic fac-
tors. This means that we as a species are genetically determined to go
through the oedipal phase. We inherit specific ways in which we will
relate to parental figures at different stages of development. What is
more, we inherit what has been called a phallocentric view of relation-
ships, a male dominated view. Freud's view of the oedipus implies the
psychological inferiority of women. Fourth, the evidence from ethology
and biology is that there is no such thing as an "aggressive drive." Tra-
ditional psychoanalytic theory confuses assertiveness with destructive
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JOSEPH PALOMBO

aggressiveness. While it is true that h u m a n beings possess a capacity to

reach out assertively to shape their environment, there is no evidence
t h a t they are innately aggressive. Hostile aggression is a response to a
threat or to an injury; it serves primarily a self-protective function.
A number of difficulties m a y also be cited with regards to the con-
cept of the ego. First, the role of endowment is generally minimized by
ego psychologists. Not only have the strengths with which we are born
not been given sufficient recognition, b u t the weaknesses and ego defi-
cits that stem from endowment are not recognized or placed within the
context of development as a whole. For example, to this day the area of
what is called "learning disabilities" (which I prefer to call neurocogni-
tive delays or "deficits") has yet to be integrated with the rest of ego
psychology. The proclivity to see emotional problems where other types
of problems exist has done a great disservice to many of the parents that
have sought help for their learning disabled children. A revision which
would include the role of endowment in development is clearly im-
perative. Second, the concept of defenses is problematic. Children are
thought to develop a hierarchy of defenses from infancy through adoles-
cence. Given what we now know about the level of infants' cognitive de-
velopment it is not possible for them to have the kinds of defenses once
attributed to them (Stern, 1985). Projection, introjection, and denial can
develop only after the emergence of representational thought at eigh-
teen months. Infants do not have the capacity to utilize such psychologi-
cal mechanisms prior to that age. Furthermore, what is explained as
stemming from defenses may more properly be understood as func-
tioning related to the operations of self regulation. Third, the idea that
what begins as primary process ends up as secondary process is also not
supported by what we currently know about cognitive development.
There is no evidence from our understanding of cognition and language
acquisition that thought either develops in the manner described by
Freud, or that the two divisions he suggested exist in the way they were
posited (Basch, 1977).
Finally, the concept of the superego has been subject to criticism.
Since the superego is the heir to the resolution of the oedipus, question-
ing the universality of the latter either leaves us without a superego, or
leaves us to explain its existence differently.
Criticisms of Mahler's theory have come from a number of direc-
tions. Kohut (1980), for example, felt that under the guise of presenting
a universal developmental theory, Mahler devised a theory that was in
keeping with the values of American pioneers and the Frontier Mental-
ity. The notion that the ideal of normality is that of someone who is to-
tally separate and individuated from others suggests that the sense of
autonomy and of individualistic action hold primacy over other values.
In contrast Kohut suggested that perhaps it is more proper to speak of
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the value of interdependence and lifelong attachments to selfobjects

rather than of rugged autonomous individualism. He also contended
that developmental theories m a y not escape embodying the values of
the culture from which they are derived, but then those values must be
spelled out. It is an error to present such theories as value free scientific
statements.
Klein (198t) has presented criticisms which are consistent with the
findings of modern infancy research. Klein states that Mahler's view
that infants are born into a state of normal autism and remain in that
state for the first two months after birth portrays infancy as no more
than a continuation of the uterine state. Such a view is not supported by
any observational data. Mahler later modified her view in this regard
and acknowledged that perhaps infants do not go through such a phase.
As for the symbiotic phase, Klein sees that view of infant development
as an adultomorphic myth constructed from a theoretical bias, but not
supported by any observational evidence.
Modern researchers such as Stern (1985) and Lichtenberg (1983)
have added their voices to that of Klein and cite a number of arguments
that question traditional development theory. First, they maintain that
Freud's view of development, as that of Mahler, is constructed not from
the observations of infants, but is either inferred from regressed states
of adults, or from the psychopathological states observed in a patient
population. This stems from a psychoanalytic principle long adhered to
b u t now being brought into question. The principle essentially states
that pathological conditions represent either fixation/arrests in develop-
ment or regressions to prior stages of development. If this were true,
then it would be possible to reconstruct the developmental sequence
from the observation of disturbed patients. By questioning this premise,
researchers are questioning not only the old view of the normal devel-
opmental sequence, but also the very nature of psychopathology itself.
Second, infancy researchers raise serious question about the supposition
that infants are born in a psychologically undifferentiated state, that
is that they have no sense of self that is differentiated from that of oth-
ers. In fact, Stern (1985) insists that infants have a sense of self that
emerges at birth and have competencies that were undreamed of by ear-
lier researchers.

II. MODERN INFANCY RESEARCH

Infancy researchers for many years had puzzled about ~'ays to get
infants to answer the many questions they had about the course of de-
velopment. In recent years they discovered ways through which they
could get infants to answer their questions. They found that a child
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JOSEPH PALOMBO

could respond either by sucking on something, or looking at something,

or by turning his~her head in a given direction. Since all of these activi-
ties are part of any infant's repertoire it became easy to construct exper-
iments which required only that the infant do one of the above. Through
the process of habituating an infant to a stimulus, and then pairing that
stimulus with a question, the infants were then able to give researchers
answers to questions which were formerly thought to be unanswerable.
The only limit to the questions asked became the inventiveness of the
researcher in framing questions that could be answered through these
means.
Based on his knowledge of the findings of infant developmental re-
search Stern (1985) declares that the infant has a sense of self as a
single, distinct, integrated unit, an agent of action, experiencer of feel-
ing, maker of intentions, architect of plans, transposer of experience
into language, communicator and sharer of personal knowledge (p. 5).
He continues by saying: Infants experience an emergent sense of self
from birth. They are predesigned to be aware of self organizing pro-
cesses. They are not confused as to who they are or who others are. They
are predesigned to be selectively responsive to external social events
and never experience an autistic like state. From three to six months
they consolidate a core sense of self as a separate, cohesive, bounded,
physical unit, with a sense of their own agency, affectivity, and continu-
ity in time. They are excellent reality testers, and have an active memo-
rial fantasy life (p. 10).
More specifically, infancy researchers have found infants to have
the following competencies:

1. From birth they seek out stimulation rather than avoid, or try to
discharge, it.
2. Within days after birth they are able to discriminate smells,
voices, visual features, and colors.
3. Within the first two to three weeks, they are capable of complex
amodal and cross modal perceptions. That is, they are capable of
translating a stimulus from one of the sensory modalities into
an activity in another sensory system.
4. They appear to be programmed for physiognomic perception within
the first week. That is, they have a special sensitivity to facial fea-
tures that leads them to gaze differently at live faces than at
masks. They are especially adept at responding to mother's smell,
voice, and face.
5. They are capable of expressing facially the full range of affects
which are:
a. surprise/startle,
b. interest/excitement,
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CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKJOURNAL

c. enjoyment/joy,
d. distress/anguish,
e. contempt/disgust,
f. anger/rage,
g. fear/terror, and
h. shame/humiliation.

These affect states become a system of signaling to which care-

givers respond, and through which the beginnings of a dialogue
emerges. Since the caregiver's response to these signals as communica-
tions to which he/she attributes meanings the child soon learns that
patterns exist and that each set of patterns has its own set of rewards or
punishments. The affects become a language through which infants are
able to express not only what they feel but also their needs and discom-
forts. This language becomes the foundation on which a complex set of
meanings are constructed from experience. It eventually leads to verbal
language, to communication as we know it.

III. A MODERN THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

All of the data from this research have served well in correcting the
misconceptions previously held about infants. However, the data alone
do not disclose a new developmental theory. This task remains to be un-
dertaken. Several people are in fact attempting to do just that, but none
has been able to rival the breadth of Freud's vision. What we now have
is as yet fragmentary.
In this paper, I shall not attempt to summarize these efforts; rather
I would like to present an outline of an integration.that I have made of
these findings with the concepts of self psychology, although at present
no theory of normal development based on the tenets of self psychology
has been formulated.
In the Analysis of the Self, Kohut (1972) suggested the general
outlines for a developmental sequence based upon the reconstructions
made in the analysis of narcissistic personality disorders. Later (1978)
he addressed some of the issues to be taken into consideration when con-
structing a developmental theory. But at no time did he propose a sys-
tematic developmental progression. Any attempt at constructing such a
theory presents a number of problems. First, self psychology, as a clin-
ical theory, deals with intersubjective states occurring within a clinical
setting. Its observations are derived from that setting and from the
selfobject interchanges that occur between patient and therapist. Clini-
cians are in the position only of verifying hypotheses regarding normal
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JOSEPH PALOMBO

development derived from data collected outside their own clinical set-
ting. The translation of that data into terms that are consistent with a
subjective perspective is at present an unresolved problem. Second, if we
are to heed the criticism of modern developmental theorists, such a the-
ory m a y not be derived solely from the reconstructions made from path-
ological states in adulthood. The relationship between earlier events in
childhood and the later appearance of symptoms has been assumed to be
one of tight coupling. That assumption has led to the circular reason-
ing that it is therefore possible to reconstruct childhood events from
the later manifestations of pathology. This assumption does not appear
to be warranted. Third, it ought to be possible to integrate the find-
ings from other disciplines into such a theory. Yet such an endeavor is
fraught with serious difficulties. Each discipline operates within a par-
ticular paradigm and formulates generalizations from its observational
data. Data collected by developmental theorists is formulated in terms
of concepts that are often not directly translatable into another theoreti-
cal framework. The dissimilarities between the two disciplines may
make for the appearance of coherence, when in actuality the meanings
of the concepts are quite different within the context of each theory.
In spite of these apparently insurmountable problems, I feel that an
attempt, however imperfect it m a y be, can be made to articulate such a
coherent theory. Furthermore, a basic premise of such an effort is that
the thrust of the psychoanalytic enterprise has been to deal with the
meanings that people derive from their experiences, and that the func-
tion of meaning making is central to the understanding of psychic func-
tioning. By focusing on the components that enter into the construction
and acquisition of meaning it is possible not only to avoid some of the
problems mentioned above, b u t also to present a consistent intersub-
jective perspective. This narrow focus permits the development of a the-
ory that takes a consistent internal perspective, and has direct clinical
applicability.
The following are some components that are constitutive of such a
theory of development. First, the literature suggests the existence of
three broad principles of mental functioning that are part of each in-
fant's endowment. These principles replace Freud's pleasure and reality
principles. They are:

1. The ordering principle: h u m a n beings have an inborn capacity to

order and organize experiences and perceptions so as to render
them meaningful.
2. The regulatory principle: infants have an inborn capacity to regu-
late and modulate the state of their internal stimulations and to
monitor, limit or amplify external stimulation; and,
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. The principle of affect integration: infants have an innate capacity

to integrate affective states into self experience, as facilitated by
caregivers, so as to render those states meaningful.

The Ordering Principle. P a r t of each infant's innate endowment is

the capacity to bring order and organization to experiences at all levels.
Whether it be at the level of pattern-matching (Basch, 1976), or of the
formation of schemata from sensori-affective-perceptual experiences
(Lichtenberg, 1983), of the assimilation of, or accommodating to, expe-
riences (Piaget, 1972), or of the recognition of self-invariants (Stern,
1985), each of these principles is in some fashion reflective of a capacity
to act upon experiences and to bring them into a form that permits the
infant to organize them into a meaningful order. Whether this capac-
ity is considered a function of our brain, or of our cognitive abilities, or
of the primary autonomous ego is not in question here. What is impor-
tant is that a broad consensus exists, in spite of the large difference in
the manner of its conceptualization, that such a principle is operative
within the infant.
The Regulatory Principle. This principle is related to the capacity
for modulating excitation, tension states, affect states and other disrup-
tive states whether these have their source within the person or outside
the person. Freud had suggested that infants are born with a stimulus
barrier that screens the infant from excessive inner or outer stimuli.
Modern developmentalists find no evidence for such a barrier, to the
contrary, what they do find is a capacity for early physiological regula-
tion (Sander, 1964, 1980, 1983), a capacity to establish homeostasis
(Greenspan, 1985), or later a capacity for regulation through an evoked
companion, (Stern, 1985). Once more it is impressive that a consensus
exists that a principle appears to operate which smoothes out for the in-
fant the rollercoaster effects of being exposed to high and low levels of
intensity experiences whether external or internal on a day-to-day,
moment-to-moment basis.
The Principle of Affect Integration. A number of affects have been
found to be part of infants' native endowment. Affect states are modu-
lated through caregivers' attunement, which permits their integration
into self experience. Their meaning function finds expression in the sig-
naling system the infant uses to draw the caregivers attention. Only the
appropriate response from the caregiver produces the sense of relief that
m a y be equated to the feeling of having been understood. It is such an
outcome that facilitates the integration of the affective experience into
the rest of the self system. This capacity which appears to be unique to
h u m a n beings is part of innate endowment.
The second major component of a developmental framework is the
exploration a n d elucidation of another set of innate givens which in-
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JOSEPH PALOMBO

cludes a broad range of competencies and characteristics that infants

possess. Two sets of characteristics and competencies may be mentioned:
the temperamental variations that Chess and Thomas (1986) have un-
covered, and the neurocognitive factors that I have suggested in prior
publications. Temperamental characteristics include such things as the
infant's

a. activity levels,
b. rhythmicity,
c. approach/withdrawal responses,
d. adaptability,
e. threshold level,
f. intensity of reactions,
g. quality of mood,
h. distractibility, and
i. persistence and attention span.

Among the neurocognitive factors I include

a. sensorimotor functions,
b. visual perceptual functions,
c. visual motor functions, and
d. expressive, receptive language, and language processing (Palombo:
1979, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985; Palombo & Feigon, 1984; Greenspan,
1987).
The significance of these elements is that each infant's experience
is colored by these innate givens. Unless these factors are taken into ac-
count, a distortion of our understanding of infant development will re-
sult. But if t a k e n into account, much light will be shed on issues previ-
ously obscure.
The third major element in a developmental scheme is the role of
the environment on the infant's course of development. Here I again re-
fer to Chess and Thomas (1986) who use the concept of the "fit" between
the infant and the caregiver to discuss that component of the environ-
ment. The ability of the caregiver to understand an infant is obviously
variable. Some infants are more difficult for some caregivers, while
other produce a match that seems made in heaven. The goodness of fit
between caregiver and infant is as significant a contributor to the
healthy unfolding of the infant's development as is good endowment.
However, for the infant who is not as well endowed, the goodness of fit
becomes a critical factor in psychological survival. The caregiver's ca-
pacity to compensate for a child's lacks can make the difference between
a child that has a chance of surviving, and one that is doomed to serious
problems. It must also be said that at one extreme there are children for
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CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKJOURNAL

whom no perfect caregiver exists capable of compensating for the defi-

cits in the child, while at the other extreme are some infants with excel-
lent endowment capable of overcoming the limitations of seriously defi-
cient environments and caregivers.
Fourth, one of the fundamental concepts of most modern develop-
mental theories is the concept of the self. For complicated reasons which
I will not enumerate here the concept of "ego" is now replaced by the
concept of "self." A developmental theory that is consistent with the
tenets of self psychology will use the concept of the self as a central con-
struct.
Self psychology maintains, in accord with findings of modern in-
fancy research, that infants are generally born with a cohesive self.
Those infants who at birth do not possess a cohesive self because of defi-
cient endowment tend to suffer from serious emotional illnesses such as
schizophrenia, autism or the severe borderline disturbances. For those
infants the nature of the fit with the caregivers will determine the ex-
tent to which their deficiencies might be mitigated by the compensa-
tions provided.
The next task is to attempt to spell out what it means to have a "co-
hesive" self, since the understanding of the meaning of cohesion is criti-
cal to this view of developmentl
Cohesion has been used descriptively to characterize the state of
self consolidation (Stolorow, Brandschaft, & Atwood, 1987, p. 90). It is a
characteristic that is present in people who can endure psychological
stresses, or narcissistic injuries without suffering from fragmentations.
That means that a person has sufficient resiliency, endurance, and
strength to tolerate insults without major sequelae. This capacity to tol-
erate potentially traumatic stresses is related to the coherence inherent
in the sense of self. That is, the coherence of the sense of self is the foun-
dation upon which cohesion is built. The sense of coherence is reflective
of the stability and integrity of a set of meaning systems which have or-
ganized the person's experiences (Saari, 1986).
The communicative exchanges that occur between caregiver and
infant begin with the infant's affective expressions which are taken as
signals by the caregiver. The caregiver's response facilitates the inte-
gration of the affective experience, and what ensues is a meaningful
exchange in which the infant derives a quantum of understanding of
what has occurred. The caregiver's attunement to the child leads to the
ability to conjecture what it is that the child is communicating. To the
extent that the a t t u n e m e n t is consonant with the child's experience, the
infant feels understood and is able to integrate what has occurred. The
meaning derived from that occurrence becomes a shared experience. To
the extent that the infant does not feel understood, the experience may
result in a failure of integration, or in a private meaning being given to
the experience.
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J O S E P H PALOMBO

Meanings are constituted of the sense a person makes on his or her

lived experiences. They are residues from these experiences which are
retained by the person. These meanings at times go beyond the so-called
"objective facts" of the experience itself depending on whether they are
shared or remain private. Meanings are the definitions a person uses to
organize and integrate his experiences.
Two universes of meaning are created as a result. The universe of
the personal (i.e. subjective) "inner" meanings, and the universe of the
shared (i.e. objective) "outer" set of meanings, the latter being mutually
shared and defined by another person. Each of these universes is orga-
nized as a set of meaning systems with its own coherence, consistency,
and level of comprehensiveness. The totality of these meaning systems
eventually constitute the coherent sense of self.
The hierarchy of meanings acquired during the course of develop-
ment m a y be conceptualized as a set of symbols which condense within
them both informational and motivational systems. Another way of
conceptualizing these phenomena is to speak of the formation of psychic
structure. Psychic functions m a y be conceived of as a set of symbol as-
semblies that remain stable over time and that become encapsulated
through redundancies. Selfobject functions that have been experienced a
multitude of times form at first a set of action patterns (Stern's RIGs).
These contain not only the infant's activity but the associated affect and
the caregiver's response. These assemblies may become associated with
a number of other assemblies to be described for example as a "soothing
function," i.e. as a selfobject function. The intersection of these assem-
blies lend the unique quality that characterizes each person as an in-
dividual. Eventually, the hierarchies of meaning systems acquire a co-
herence that defines that personality. This coherence is experienced as a
sense of cohesion.
The sense of self cohesion may then be defined as the experience
that results in the establishment of a coherent personal and/or shared
set of meaning systems. It is constituted of the totality of the person's
experiences both conscious and unconscious. It is enduring in its stabil-
ity. It is reflected by the sense of intactness, of wholeness and of vitality.
Once firm, it is capable of accrual of meanings and of on-going growth.
The cohesive self is the structure that is constituted of the set of coher-
ent meaning systems that have arisen during the course of develop-
ment. It is the product of one's endowment and of the psychic principles,
in tandem with the selfobjects who facilitate the integration of affective
experience. It is the center of a person's organization.

CONCLUSION
Theories are necessary tools through which we organize our knowl-
edge of the world. However, theories that may be thought to hold true
22

CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK JOURNAL

today m a y be found wanting tomorrow. It therefore behooves us not to

be too dogmatic in representing new theories as those t h a t will endure,
and recognize t h a t knowledge will overtake any position which we
espouse.
The magic years have not lost their magic for us who are students
of h u m a n nature. If a n y t h i n g they remain even more wondrous t h a n
ever. Children remain children; it is only our perception of them t h a t
changes. It is the meanings t h a t we attribute to their behavior t h a t
have shifted and continue to shift. The old theories t a u g h t us to think in
terms of drives t h a t provide the motive power for all behavior. It was so-
ciety's role through the parenting process to curb and tame those drives
so t h a t the child might become civilized. A new theory has now dis-
placed the old one. A new set of motivations is being posited as guid-
ing development. Our explanations today are centered around the con-
cept t h a t the motivation for psychological functioning is provided by our
unique h u m a n need to make sense of and to order our experiences, and
t h a t a sense of coherence is central to our psychological being. However,
coherence is based upon the relative capacities t h a t are brought to bear
on the task of integration, and on the individual meanings t h a t each ex-
perience comes to have for each child. Each person experiences reality
differently, and only shared experiences come to have a common mean-
ing. This does not imply t h a t the meaning one person derives from an
experience is wrong, and the meaning derived by another is right. It
only means t h a t we each come to integrate what occurs in different
ways.
For Fraiberg, parents were missionaries who brought civilization
to the wild pygmies t h a t children were perceived to be. According to
our new theory, parents serve as facilitators who help children inte-
grate experiences, and who give meaning to some of these experiences
through sharing in them. W h a t m a y be drawn from this is t h a t for us to
become adequate parents, we must be able to render meaningful to our
children the world in which we live. This makes it imperative t h a t we
make meaningful our own lives within the context of the society in
which we exist.

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