Affiliation:
1. Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh
2. Department of Black Community Education Research and Development, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract
The developmental sequence through which an infant moves from early neonatal life to an awareness of social reality and the achievement of separate identity was labeled in 1975 by Mahler, Pine, and Bergman the separation-individuation process. They have identified six developmental subphases-Autism, Symbiosis, Differentiation, Practicing, Rapprochement, and Libidinal Object Constancy-which are estimated by the Separation-Individuation Inventory recently developed and evaluated by Taylor and Bartolomucci. In the current study we have further evaluated the validity of the inventory, noting expected patterns of intercorrelations among subphases: correlations between adjacent phases were higher than correlations between more distant phases.