Quality of attachment and early symbolic play.

This research investigated (a) the relationship between the quality of attachment and symbolic play development and (b) differences in the ways mothers of secure and anxious children involved themselves in play. Fifteen mother–child dyads (7 secure, 8 anxious) were filmed at regular intervals in free play from 20–28 months. Results indicated that secure children had longer episodes of symbolic play overall and that at 26 and 28 months they spent more time in the highest level of symbolic play than their anxious peers. When symbolic play variables were contrasted across maternal involvement conditions, secure children were found to have longer episodes and higher level play when mothers were actively engaged in play with them. Thus, mother's involvement appeared to serve a facilitating function for secure, but not anxious, children. When engaged in conversation with an experimenter, mothers of secure children were more involved in their children's play and appeared to favor play in which they actively interacted with the child; in contrast, mothers of anxious children favored passive participation in their children's play. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Maternal Desire: On Love, Children, and the Inner Life.

Reviews the book Maternal Desire: On Love, Children, and the Inner Life by Daphne de Marneffe (2004). This book is based on the premise that the desire to care for one's children is one of life's great pleasures and opportunities for fulfillment. In creating a relationship, and, by extension, a psychological life, suggests de Marneffe, women find particular and crucial meaning and authenticity. Grounded in psychoanalytic, attachment, and feminist theory as well as de Marneffe's own personal journey, Maternal Desire is a subtle rebuke to feminists' inherent derogation of motherhood and a far less subtle encouragement to women to open themselves to feelings that, in this day and age, may seem heretical. De Marneffe, who is a clinical psychologist and mother of three, was powerfully affected by the experience of struggling to balance the demands of her own career with her growing and ultimately grounding desire to care for her children. By the time she gave birth to her third child, she had decided to stop practicing in order to stay at home. The intensely personal nature of her evolution is at the heart of this book; the richness, the sensuousness, and the depth of her longing to care for her children are its emotional core. This revolutionary book challenges women (and men) to take on all the complex pleasures of motherhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Attachment in psychotherapy.

Reviews the book, Attachment in psychotherapy by David J. Wallin (see record 2007-05421-000). This intellectual and clinical tour-de-force is what we have been waiting for: a book that is on the one hand a coherent, creative, thoughtful, and remarkably integrated view of contemporary psychoanalysis, with attachment, and attachment processes, at its core, and on the other a reflection on our daily, complex, work with patients. The book has three broad aims: first, to ground the reader in attachment theory and research, second, to broaden the reach of attachment theory by building bridges to other aspects of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and science, and third to apply this broader, deeply psychoanalytic, clinical attachment theory to understanding the dynamics of an individual patient and the dynamics of clinical work. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary psychoanalysis. Few writers have the ability to write so directly and clearly about complex science and theory; his scholarship and reach are extraordinary. This book is also a book for therapists at all levels of experience. Throughout every section of the book, Wallin writes about his work with patients, about the therapeutic process, about the therapeutic situation, and about the therapeutic relationship, in all its complexity. In the end, he creates a truly contemporary vision of human development, affect regulation, and relational processes, grounded in the body and in the brain, and in the fundamental relationships that make us who we are, as therapists, as patients, and as human beings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability and change in mothers' representations of their relationship with their toddlers.

This study examined several issues in the developmental dynamics of parents' representations of their relationship with their toddlers. The authors studied 125 mothers and their firstborn toddler sons over a 13-month period. Mothers took the Parent Development Interview twice, when children were 15 and 28 months of age. Home observations of parent–child interactions and maternal ratings of daily hassles were collected when children were 21 and 27 months of age. The 3 factors that characterized mothers' representations of their 15-month-old firstborn sons (Joy–Pleasure/Coherence, Anger, Guilt–Separation Distress) also fit the data very well for their 28-month-old sons. Although there were no changes in average levels of mothers' (a) joy, pleasure, and coherence and (b) guilt and separation distress from 15 to 28 months, there was a significant increase in mothers' levels of anger. Stability analyses suggested a dynamic relationship between mothers' representations of joy, pleasure, and coherence and of anger over the 13-month period. Finally, changes in mothers' representations were predictable by positive mothering (which led to increased joy, pleasure, and coherence) and by parenting daily hassles (which led to more anger). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mothers' representations of their relationships with their toddlers: Links to adult attachment and observed mothering.

Mothers (N?=?125) and their firstborn sons were studied over an 11-month period to examine relations between mothers' representations of their relationships with their children (measured at 15 months by using the Parent Development Interview [PDI]), adult representations of attachment (measured at 12 months by using the Adult Attachment Interview [AAI]), and observed mothering (measured at 15 and 21 months). Results indicate (a) that mothers classified as autonomous on the AAI scored highest on the joy-pleasure/coherence dimension of the PDI and mothers classified as dismissing on the AAI scored highest on the anger dimension of the PDI and (b) that mothers scoring higher on the joy-pleasure/coherence dimension of the PDI engaged in less negative and more positive mothering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A user-assisted approach to visualizing multidimensional images

We present a new technique for fusing together an arbitrary number of aligned images into a single color or intensity image. We approach this fusion problem from the context of Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) and describe an algorithm that preserves the relative distances between pairs of pixel values in the input (vectors of measurements) as perceived differences in a color image. The two main advantages of our approach over existing techniques are that it can incorporate user constraints into the mapping process and allows adaptively compressing or exaggerating features in the input in order to make better use of the output's limited dynamic range. We demonstrate these benefits by showing applications in various scientific domains and comparing our algorithm to previously proposed techniques.     

Mothers' fantasy representations and infant security of attachment: A Rorschach study of first pregnancy.

Studied the relationship between pregnant women's fantasy representations on the Rorschach test and later attachment status of their 1-yr-olds. The Manual for Assessing Primary Process Manifestations in Rorschach Responses (R. R. Holt, 1968) was used to score Rorschach protocols gathered from 25 women during their 1st pregnancies. Later, the 1-yr-olds and their mothers were videotaped in the Strange Situation to assess infant attachment behaviors. Findings support the hypothesis that primary process integration during pregnancy is significantly and positively related to infant security of attachment. Results also suggest a relation between empathic maternal behaviors and dimensions of mothers' unconscious mental representations measurable prior to the infant's birth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)