Margaret Mahler?

Question:

Margaret Mahler?

What influence did Margaret Mahler have on child psychology?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: She studied disrupted children and early childhood attachments between mothers. By studying the relationships between mother and child she was able to distinguish psychotic children from autistic children. She felt that autistic children are unable to utilize mothers as auxiliary egos having no interest in relating to their mother or any person. Mahler distinguished symbiotic children to be attached to their mothers. These children are inseparable from their parents, unable to do anything independently.

Mahler and her colleagues sought to answer these questions through a methodology based on detailed observations of mother-child pairs in normal interactions. Combining these observations with interviews and home visits over time, they documented the process of separation-individuation through which children "hatched" from the cocoon of symbiosis with the mother and became aware of themselves as participants in the world around them.