Wolff P H
Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
J Am Psychoanal Assoc. 1996;44(2):369-92; discussion 392-474. doi: 10.1177/000306519604400202.
The current consensus among psychoanalysts holds that direct infant observations are one means for testing the developmental propositions of psychoanalytic theory; that the observations have already falsified some of the theory's basic propositions; and that they hold the key to a qualitatively different developmental theory of psychoanalysis. The consensus, although not universal, has motivated a wide range of research programs on early infancy, whose findings are commonly interpreted as disclosing psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical theory in an entirely new light. This essay examines some of the assumptions that have motivated such investigations, as well as the research strategies by which the new versions of theory are promulgated. On the basis of these explorations it is concluded that psychoanalytically informed infant observations may be the source for new theories of social-emotional development, but that they are essentially irrelevant for psychoanalysis as a psychology of meanings, unconscious ideas, and hidden motives.
目前，精神分析学家们的共识是，对婴儿的直接观察是检验精神分析理论发展命题的一种手段；这些观察已经证伪了该理论的一些基本命题；并且它们是一种性质不同的精神分析发展理论的关键所在。这种共识虽不普遍，却推动了一系列关于婴儿早期的研究项目，其研究结果通常被解释为从全新视角揭示了精神分析的元心理学和临床理论。本文审视了推动此类研究的一些假设，以及宣扬新理论版本所采用的研究策略。基于这些探索，得出的结论是，基于精神分析的婴儿观察可能是社会情感发展新理论的来源，但对于作为一种关于意义、无意识观念和隐藏动机的心理学的精神分析而言，它们基本上毫无关联。
