Mahler, Margaret

Margaret Mahler was born on May 10, 1897 into a Jewish family in the small town of Sopron in northwestern Hungary . The childhood of little Margaret and her younger sister turned out to be difficult due to the frequent disagreements of their parents. However, her father did not stop encouraging her efforts and successes in mathematics and other sciences. After graduating from the female lyceum, she entered the Vaci Utcai Gimnazium in Budapest, despite the fact that at that time women rarely continued their educational activities in higher education. A stay in Budapest had a big impact on her life and career. ^[4] She met the influential Hungarian psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi, after which she became interested in the concept of the unconscious and plunged into Sigmund Freud’s reading ^[5] .

In September 1916, Margaret Mahler began studying art history at the University of Budapest, but in January 1917 she changed her specialty, choosing medicine. After three semesters, she began medical training at the University of Munich, but was forced to leave due to growing tension towards Jews. In the spring of 1920, she entered the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena , and this particular institution was the place where Margaret began to study and realize the need for play and love in the mentally and physically healthy development of babies. In 1922, she received a diploma with honors and went to Vienna to get a license that would allow her to practice medicine. There in 1926, she, along with Helena Deutsch, began work on didactic psychoanalysis. Seven years later, Margaret was approved as a psychoanalyst. The girl loved to work with children, she liked the joy with which children interacted with her.

In 1936, she married Paul Mahler. After the Nazis came to power, the couple moved to the UK, and then to the United States in 1938. After receiving a medical license in New York, Mahler in her basement founded a private practice and began to rebuild her clientele. In 1939, she met Benjamin Spock, and after holding a seminar on child psychoanalysis in 1940, she became a senior lecturer in this subject. She became a member of the Institute for Human Development, the Institute of Education, and the New York Psychoanalytic Community. In 1948, Margaret worked on clinical trials on benign and malignant cases in diseases of childhood psychosis.

In 1980, Barnard College at the opening ceremony awarded Margaret Mahler their highest award, a medal for the outstanding services of Barnard.

Margaret Mahler died on October 2, 1985.

Margaret Mahler held the position of psychoanalyst, working with children who had mental disorders.

In 1950, she and Manuel Führer founded the Leading Children's Center in Manhattan (he was associated with Mount Sinai Hospital). There she developed a tripartite treatment model, one of the concepts of which was the participation of the mother in the treatment of the child. ^[5] Mahler began a more constructive study of serious mental disorders in childhood and assigned a significant role to the influence of the environment on the child. She was especially interested in the idea of ​​the mental and physical connection of mother and child, therefore she carefully recorded all the experimental consequences of the separation of the infant from the mother too early. This study of the process of separation-individuation was her most important contribution to the development of psychoanalysis.

Separation-individuation can be considered as the psychological birth of an infant, which occurs at that moment in time when the child separates from the mother and begins to realize his own “I”.

Mahler explained the normal and abnormal features in the psychology of the development of the ego (Ego-Psychology) . She worked with children in whom psychosis was observed, while this disorder and the methods of its treatment have not yet been fully studied by psychoanalysts ^[6] .

A symbiotic childhood psychosis hit her. Symptoms were manifested in the fact that the child lost a clear awareness of himself and the world around him (the idea of ​​a familiar person), a conflict was born between the "I" and the outside world. ^[5] Her most significant work is The Psychological Birth of a Human Baby: Symbiosis and Individuation, written in 1975 in collaboration with Fred Pine and Annie Bergman.

In Mahler’s theory, the development of a child occurs in stages, each of which has several subphases:

• The normal autistic phase is the phase of the first few weeks of life. The baby has already been born and independently perceives the surrounding. However, he spends most of his day in a half-awake half-awake state. Mahler later abandoned the theory of the existence of this phase, based on the new results of his research. ^[5] Nevertheless, this stage still appears in many books on its theories.
• The phase of normal symbiosis - lasts up to 5 months. The child now distinguishes the image of his mother from the environment, but he still cannot separate his personality from the outside world. The baby and his mother become one, a barrier appears between them and the rest of the unknown.
• Separation-individuation phase . The establishment of this phase marks the end of the phase of normal symbiosis. The separation process speaks of the infant's awareness of the boundaries of objects, of the ability to establish a distinction between herself and her mother, while the process of individuation is related to the development of the baby’s “ego”, a sense of self and the ability to know. Mahler explains how a child with an age of several months breaks out of the "autistic shell" into the outside world of human interactions. This process, designated as separation-individuation, is divided into subphases, each of which has its own beginning and end, as well as certain threats. The following subphases proceed in a certain order, but their partial coincidence is not excluded.
  • Hatching - the first months. The baby is aware of the existence of differences between him and his mother. The child “hatched” - mobility increases and interest in the outside world increases. Mother is the object of study and comparison with others.
  • Practice - about 9-16 months. The baby’s abilities to crawl and then walk freely allow him to actively immerse himself in research activities, so the first attempts at physical distance from the mother appear. But still the child perceives the mother as the center of his universe.
  • Reunion - 15-24 months. In this subphase, the infant again becomes emotionally dependent on the mother. Now the child realizes that his physical activity is moving him more and more away from his mother, so his attention to her is intensified. The baby can feel insecurity and wants the mother to always be in his field of vision, so their eye contact, her encouragement or censure act as an orientation towards the ability to explore her world. The risk is that the mother may misunderstand this need and react with irritability or absence. This can lead to the fact that the baby will have alarming fears of being abandoned. The reunification subphase is in turn divided into three periods:
    • The beginning of reunion - the child’s behavior is motivated by a desire to share his discoveries with his mother.
    • The reunification crisis - a child in interaction with his mother may either constantly want to experience emotional closeness, or show greater independence.
    • Decision - the development of the ability to speak and the increasing role of conscience makes it possible to make independent decisions.

Violations in the main processes of separation-individuation can subsequently lead to a violation of the ability to maintain their individuality in adulthood. ^[6]

The constancy (constancy) of the object, similar to the concept of "constancy of the object" by Jean Piaget , describes the phase when the child understands that the mother has a special identity and is truly an individual. This leads to the formation of internalization , which is an internal idea that the child was once part of the mother. This internalization is what gives the child a mental image that helps, on a subconscious level, see in the mother the embodiment of support and comfort. Deficiencies in positive internalization can lead to feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem in adulthood. ^[7]

• On human symbiosis and the vicissitudes of individuation, 1969.
• The psychological birth of the human infant: symbiosis and individuation, 1975.
• Infantile psychosis and early contributions
• Rapprochement - critical subphase, separation - individuation
• Separation - individuation

• Coates, SW, John Bowlby and Margaret S. Mahler: Their lives and theories (2004)
• Mitchell, SA, and Black, MJ (1995). Freud and Beyond . New York: Basic Books.
• Notes on the development of basic moods: the depressive affect. In Drives, Affects, Behavior , vol. 2, ed Max Schur, NY: International Universities Press, pp. 161–169.
• Mahler, S. and Pine, MM and F., Bergman, A. (1973). The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant , New York: Basic Books.
• Thoughts about development and individuation. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child , 1963.