ABSTRACT
This section honors Anni Bergman as a pioneer in theory, research, and clinical work across the lifespan. The papers were selected because they demonstrated deep understanding of the developmental process as applied to clinical work, in ways that reflect Dr. Bergman’s own practice. Singletary elaborates on Bergman’s later writing on rapprochement, seeing it as a lifelong process of dealing with the inevitable pains of life and its limitations, not just an early phase of development. Diamond et al. bring a developmental perspective to separation anxiety, its transformations, and links to later pathology/normality. Gold’s research-informed work in parent infant treatment emphasizes hearing the voice of the baby and creating a play space for listening as key in emphasizing mismatch and repair. Blom’s complex case presentation emphasizes the maternal in the treatment of a traumatized mother as she seeks safety as a parent wrestling with the ghosts of her nursery, and the traumatizing social systems in which she exists. Belinson et al. present an approach to supporting the most marginalized and vulnerable children, in families suffering from poverty, social marginalization, and intergenerational trauma. Throughout, there is insistence on creating space for multiple developmental processes including finding ways to be together. Lastly, Harrison presents a single case in which she shows the microanalytic process of working with a neurodiverse boy, using methods of building narratives that are outside language and symbolic play.
This section, Honoring Anni Bergman, pays special tribute to a pioneer in psychoanalytic theory, research, and working across the lifespan. Her interest in reaching the most challenging individuals through understanding the nuances and creative use of various modalities is amply demonstrated by this collection of research and clinical papers that build on deep yet flexible veneration of developmental processes. We show current applications of her own work and her influence in the work of contemporaries with whom she collaborated at different phases of her own professional development.
Anni Bergman was a uniquely open and playful person generous with herself, and with a strong commitment to what facilitates development. She made the best out of what life offered up. Anni was a keen observer of nuance, difference, and connection, especially in nonverbal experience and moments of meeting. She also sought to integrate a rapidly evolving knowledge of developmental psychology and clinical practice into her work, through formal measures or technique. In the present day, Anni’s influence embodies a curious, active, integrative stance that helps patients find themselves and helps clinicians stay close to the work through their own learning. She was a humble and compassionate participant in any process, trying to find people inside their own experiences, and connecting with them there. She had a unique ability to enter experiences of “otherness,” which she attributed to her own encounters with not quite belonging anywhere while also finding homes everywhere. Thus, Anni built bridges across theories and time and place. In her later years, she was determined to integrate Attachment Theory and Separation-Individuation Theory, believing that each could contribute to and enrich the other. These papers are united in their devotion to close observation, flexible curiosity, an integrative approach to theory, and a tolerance for waiting even under urgent conditions.
Anni intended her work to pave the way for a reconciliation of Attachment Theory and Separation-Individuation Theory. This integration is better conceptualized as Attachment-Individuation theory, which highlights the unique contributions of each to a unified developmental unfolding. Singletary’s article aims to further this integration in order to enrich and increase the clinical utility of both. He embraces and elaborates on Anni’s later work regarding reconsideration of the place of rapprochement in development over the lifespan. Rapprochement is not considered to be a stage but a process of dealing with the inevitable pains of life, hardships, and unfairness. A major theme of his paper is that metabolizing the love and care one receives fuels development, growth, reparation, and healing. The initial manifestation of disappointment (not just distress) is during the second year of life, as the toddler grows to understand his separateness from mother – that he/she is relatively small in this world, and that mother’s powers do not belong to him/her. Secure attachment followed by libidinal object constancy means that the toddler can integrate his loving feelings with his rage and disappointment, which sets the stage for caring relationships and optimal development over the life span. By contrast a predominant sense of danger in early life, either reality-based or primarily an internal experience, leads to the development of an insecure attachment, hostile object constancy, a form of self-regulation based on the anticipation of future danger, and thence to the defensive refusal of the actual love and care one receives. Subsequently there is interference with the capacity for caring relationships, which leads to pathological development over the course of life. Can one restore positive equilibrium with forgiveness following perturbations?
Diamond et al. bring a developmental perspective to the study of separation anxiety, including issues of transformation and links to later pathology. Seen from the earliest months of life, it has proven to be a major factor in anxiety disorders, depression, and PTSD in adult lives, making these clinical manifestations more resistant to treatment. The authors trace the earliest manifestations and the changing meanings of separation anxiety through the developmental process to understand the later manifestations in adult pathology. While separation anxiety is a sign of healthy development in the first year of life in that it involves the ubiquitous experience of missing someone who is loved and longed for, it is at the core of both secure and insecure development. The authors delineate the developmental outcomes of successful and unsuccessful passage through separation anxiety and delineate how Bowlby and Mahler delineate healthy and unhealthy ways of coping with it. Following Anni Bergman, they also look at the complex relationship among separation anxiety, attachment, and reflective function in normal and pathological development. They discuss various therapeutic interventions based on Attachment and Separation-Individuation theory and their varying effectiveness. The important role of aggression and conflict is discussed.
Gold’s work emphasizes Anni’s profound sense of playfulness and her unique ability to observe deeply and sensitively in order to understand behavior from the inside. She first listens to the parent(s), their fear that something is wrong with their child or with themselves, and this holding and waiting allows for meaning to emerge. One then can hear the voice of the baby through his/her behavior. Creating a play space for listening allows for exploration and curiosity. Simple observation helps shift one out of an agitated state to one of reflection. Parent and child develop the ability to manage big feelings, engage flexibly and effectively in the social world. Early interactions are messy; mismatch and repair provide the fuel for healthy growth. Parents need a holding environment to be able to recognize the meaning of behavior from the infant’s perspective. Leaning heavily on the work of Winnicott, Tronick, Trevarthan, and Brazelton, all friends of Anni, Dr. Gold illustrates the relevance of observational research and the power of watching and slowing down in today’s fast-paced, time-limited landscape. Likewise, meeting with families in their homes via telehealth brings this legacy into contemporary times.
Clinical examples on the creative ways of connecting and reaching patients of all ages and the role of social cultural factors, so important to Anni, follow. She appreciated the social environment as both informing clinical concerns as well as providing opportunities to be creative and collaborative in the work.
Not-knowing is the foundation of a clinical case described in Inga Blom’s paper. In contrast to Dr. Gold’s work, the clinical gaze here is oriented from baby to mother, who presents for treatment desperate to find her way into a safe future as a mother, and a way out of a difficult history. This clinical approach draws from concepts Anni helped elucidate, such as object-constancy, and allied theory that emerged alongside Separation-Individuation Theory, to consider the origins of the mind of the patient as she navigates an emerging maternal identity. Formal structured and semi-structured measures, including the Adult Attachment Interview, championed by Anni as tools for theory building and integration, allow for shared moments that deepen the treatment. The case illustrates so well the importance of coming to know the mother and establishing meaningful bonding and communication as the way into helping the child.
In their paper “Attachment, separation, and multigenerational loss in young children in the foster care” several clinicians at New Alternatives for Children (NAC) describe Building Blocks (BB), an approach to working with some of the most vulnerable and marginalized children and families in New York City. Building Blocks founders worked directly with Dr. Bergman for many years. Families arrive in their program defined by separation and intergenerational trauma, in addition to the medical or “special needs” that this program specifically serves. The Building Blocks program adopts a dyadic framework that recognizes the deep love and frailty that define interactions across generations, and the many ways in which the systems and structures that have defined these families have failed to recognize their deep distress. In the work with two families, multiple clinicians grapple with how to find their way into a therapeutic encounter with severely traumatized toddlers, who are accompanied by their well-meaning but fragmented and stretched biological and nonbiological caregivers. Everyone’s needs are considered and reflected, again harkening to Anni’s insistence on creating space for multiple, often conflicting, developmental processes, parents included, as a pathway into creatively finding ways to be together.
The last paper in this series, a paper by Alexandra Harrison, is a single case presentation of a neurodiverse seven-year-old child, involving a single session that is videotaped and microanalyzed. After a missed session, the challenge to build a narrative about separation and reunion is beautifully described, involving the challenging task of finding words that could be useful building blocks for a coherent narrative. Her work gives us a deep look into and appreciation of the essence of co-creative meaning making. Part of the challenge was managing intense affect and arousal states with the help of rhythm, tone, and pace of voice and turn-taking coordination in a child with an inarticulate quality of speech, language processing and orientation problems, and pronounced dyssynchronicity in the vocal turn taking of conversation. The importance of context for making meaning with multiple efforts to connect seemed to result in a “now moment.” Harrison makes clear her identification with Anni’s willingness to use methods outside of language and symbolic play to reach a child, which she does most successfully.
When Anni arrived in New York City in the 1950s, to build her career and family, she had already transcended many early losses and war, studied music and psychoanalysis, and established new home-base relationships across continents and time zones. She appreciated the power of early life experiences while maintaining the transformative opportunities of new relationships and new environments. She made meeting people – from infancy through adulthood – where they could be found the essence of her life work and contributed so much, through her writing, research, and relationships, to so many people, ideas, and practices, and to the field as a whole.
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Notes on contributors
Wendy Olesker
Wendy Olesker, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and on the Faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She is Senior Editor of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. She is Director of the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. For the past ten years she has been Director of the Follow-up Study of the Margaret Mahler Foundation.
Inga Blom
Inga Blom, Ph.D., PMH-C, is a clinical psychologist based in New York City. She obtained her Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research, where she was mentored by Anni Bergman and Miriam Steele on follow-up research with the original subjects of Separation-Individuation Theory. For many years, she worked as Anni Bergman’s assistant. Currently, she is a training director and program director of a reproductive mental health program in an urban hospital. She also works in private practice and teaches undergraduate courses.