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Margaret Mahler studied what is today known as regressive autism. She mistakenly classified it as a mental illness due to her pseudo-scientific, psychoanalytic approach: according to her, it was a form of "infantile psychosis" which she described as emerging around the third year of life of the child. The symptoms were deterioration of speech, echolalia, and general regression of functioning, among others, which are described as Autistic Disorder by modern, evidence-based medicine.
This article has a fringe psychoanalytic point of view which opposes that of modern, evidence-based medicine, and therefore has to be checked for neutrality. --
AnEternalSkeptic (
talk) 00:32, 4 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Dear AnEternalSkeptic, Margaret Mahler's work needs to be considered in the context her time in the history of psychiatry. Her writings, during the 1960's & 70's reflected those current day views on infant mental health. It was also at the cusp of an era where these views became challenged. However, Margaret Mahler's contribution to the understanding of normal development remains influential, though overshadowed by the abundance of research and applications of attachment theory. Her contributions include: a).the notion that the development of a subjective experience of what we call 'self' is a process that emerges through psycho-biological phases, b). the quality of this development is reliant upon the quality of what we now call the attachment relationship, and c). that the maturational push of psycho-biological influences, apart from the quality of the infant-caregiver relationship is in and of itself a source of resilency that can help to override whatever may have gone wrong in earlier phases.
Carrieruggieri (
talk) 10:24, 25 June 2016 (UTC)reply
Assessment comment
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Margaret Mahler/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following
several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Why is there a headline named "Object constancy" that obviously has nothing to do with object constancy? The content of that part doesn't seem quite right either: "This leads to the formation of Internalization, which the internal representation that the child has formed of the mother" -- first of all, there should be an "is", and second, is it really formation of the ability to internalize in general, or should it be the internalization of something specific?
Last edited at 15:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC).
Substituted at 23:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
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Margaret Mahler studied what is today known as regressive autism. She mistakenly classified it as a mental illness due to her pseudo-scientific, psychoanalytic approach: according to her, it was a form of "infantile psychosis" which she described as emerging around the third year of life of the child. The symptoms were deterioration of speech, echolalia, and general regression of functioning, among others, which are described as Autistic Disorder by modern, evidence-based medicine.
This article has a fringe psychoanalytic point of view which opposes that of modern, evidence-based medicine, and therefore has to be checked for neutrality. --
AnEternalSkeptic (
talk) 00:32, 4 March 2016 (UTC)reply
Dear AnEternalSkeptic, Margaret Mahler's work needs to be considered in the context her time in the history of psychiatry. Her writings, during the 1960's & 70's reflected those current day views on infant mental health. It was also at the cusp of an era where these views became challenged. However, Margaret Mahler's contribution to the understanding of normal development remains influential, though overshadowed by the abundance of research and applications of attachment theory. Her contributions include: a).the notion that the development of a subjective experience of what we call 'self' is a process that emerges through psycho-biological phases, b). the quality of this development is reliant upon the quality of what we now call the attachment relationship, and c). that the maturational push of psycho-biological influences, apart from the quality of the infant-caregiver relationship is in and of itself a source of resilency that can help to override whatever may have gone wrong in earlier phases.
Carrieruggieri (
talk) 10:24, 25 June 2016 (UTC)reply
Assessment comment
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Margaret Mahler/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following
several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Why is there a headline named "Object constancy" that obviously has nothing to do with object constancy? The content of that part doesn't seem quite right either: "This leads to the formation of Internalization, which the internal representation that the child has formed of the mother" -- first of all, there should be an "is", and second, is it really formation of the ability to internalize in general, or should it be the internalization of something specific?
Last edited at 15:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC).
Substituted at 23:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
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