The Psychological Birth: Mahler on the Journey to Becoming a Person
Psychoanalytic thought offers few concepts as foundational as the idea that our biological birth and our psychological birth are not the same event. The former is a dramatic, observable moment; the latter is a slow, intrapsychic unfolding that is the quiet, lifelong business of becoming a person. In her groundbreaking work, Margaret Mahler provides a crucial map of this territory, charting the infant’s journey from a state of “symbiotic oneness” with the mother to the establishment of a separate self. As I delve deeper into my own psychoanalytic training, Mahler’s ideas on this separation-individuation process feel especially vital, offering profound clarity on both human development and the nature of the therapeutic endeavor.
Mahler’s work is grounded in two of Freud’s foundational tenets: first, that the human infant is born into a state of prolonged, absolute dependence, and second, that the quality of our object relationships is the most reliable measure of our mental health. For Mahler, “growing up” is the process of gradually moving away from the normal symbiotic phase — that initial state of dual unity where the infant and mother exist within a common boundary. This journey, which takes place roughly from the 5th to the 36th month, is what she terms the separation-individuation phase. Based on meticulous naturalistic studies, Mahler charted this process through four distinct subphases. The first three — Differentiation, Practicing, and Rapprochement — offer a compelling narrative of the infant’s first steps toward psychological birth.
1. Differentiation: The “Hatching” (5-10 months)
Around the fifth month, at the peak of symbiosis, the first stirrings of separation begin. Mahler metaphorically calls this process hatching from the mother-infant symbiotic common orbit. Having become familiar with the mothering half of their symbiotic self, infants begin to show a specific, preferential smiling response to their mother — a supreme sign that a unique bond has formed. This is accompanied by a new physical and sensory curiosity. The infant begins to manually and visually explore the mother’s face and body, discovering her features as distinct from their own. They may start to physically push away from the holding mother, not in rejection, but to get a better look, to scan her and the wider world. This is the dawn of comparative checking: the infant visually refers back to the mother’s face when encountering a stranger or a new experience, using her as a point of orientation. This hatching marks the infant’s emergence from the vague twilight of symbiosis into a more permanently alert and outwardly directed state of being.
2. Practicing: A “Love Affair with the World” (10-16 months)
Fueled by the maturation of autonomous functions like crawling and upright walking, the toddler enters the practicing subphase. This period is characterized by an exhilarated absorption in their own newfound abilities and the vast world they can now explore. Greenacre famously termed this the love affair with the world, a time of apparent grandiosity and relative imperviousness to the knocks and falls of exploration. Yet, this exhilarating independence is not absolute. The mother remains a crucial home base for what Mahler termed emotional refueling. We can observe a toddler, absorbed in play, suddenly crawl or walk rapidly back to their mother, make physical contact for a moment, and then, as if recharged, venture back out into the world. This behavior beautifully illustrates the dynamic of this phase: the child uses their growing motor skills to create physical distance, yet still relies on the mother’s stable presence to feel secure enough to explore.
3. Rapprochement: The Crisis of an Emerging Self (16-24 months)
Following the elation of the practicing period, the toddler enters the pivotal and often tumultuous rapprochement subphase. With growing cognitive and emotional awareness, the toddler’s previous obliviousness to the mother’s presence is replaced by an active and constant concern for her whereabouts. The realization of their separateness is no longer just a physical fact; it is a dawning psychological reality. This awareness brings with it a painful discovery: the world is not their oyster, and they are, in fact, a “relatively helpless, small and separate individual”. The delusion of grandeur from the practicing subphase gives way to an urgent need to reconnect and share every new experience with the mother. This creates the central conflict of the phase: a rapidly alternating desire to push the mother away to assert autonomy, and a desperate need to pull her close to defend against the anxiety of separation. This struggle between fusion and isolation is what Mahler terms the “rapprochement crisis”. It is a critical turning point where the toddler must gradually give up the delusion of parental omnipotence and face the complexities of being a separate person in a world of other separate people.
Regarding the implications for the therapeutic space, Mahler’s framework does more than just describe infancy; it offers a profound lens through which to understand the therapeutic process. In our clinical work, we often witness the echoes of these early stages. The patient’s struggle to establish a safe distance, the need for the therapist to function as a reliable “home base” for exploration, and the often-painful ambivalence of the rapprochement crisis — these are not merely repetitions, but the living reverberations of our psychological birth. Understanding this journey from oneness to separateness is essential, for in many ways, it is a journey that is never truly finished.
We often hear the proverb, ‘no pain, no gain.’ Mahler’s work, however, suggests a deeper truth: that to gain a self is to experience a loss. The real work, then, may lie in our capacity to be aware of what is lost in the very process of becoming.
To Be is To Be Held: Winnicott and the Matrix of Personhood
There are certain ideas in psychoanalysis that, once encountered, alter the very way we see. For me, D.W. Winnicott’s 1960 paper, “The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship,” is one such text. It doesn’t just offer a theory; it provides a language for the silent, foundational experiences that shape our capacity to be, to feel real, and to connect. As I begin my formal psychoanalytic training at Columbia, I find myself returning to this paper, not as a static piece of history, but as a living document that continues to illuminate the deepest dynamics of the therapeutic process.
Winnicott’s radical starting point is a phrase that elegantly dissolves one of our most basic assumptions:
“There is no such thing as an infant”.
What he means, of course, is that an infant cannot exist in isolation. At the beginning of life, there is only an “infant-environment unit”. A baby’s inherited potential can only blossom into a person if it is met and protected by what Winnicott calls the holding environment.
Holding is a concept that extends far beyond the physical act of being held. It is the total environmental provision — reliable, empathic, and exquisitely attuned — that protects the infant from impingement (= intrusive environmental failure that interrupts being and forces premature reacting). It is a state of absolute dependence where the mother’s ego essentially serves as an auxiliary ego for the infant, scaffolding the baby’s nascent self.
Why is this so crucial? Because, for Winnicott, the primary state of the healthy infant is one of simply “going-on-being”. When the holding environment fails, when an external demand or internal need is not met with attunement, the infant is forced to react. And for an unintegrated self, reacting is the opposite of being. Each reaction is a fragmentation, an interruption of that precious continuity. The subjective experience of this interruption is not mere frustration; it is a dread of annihilation — a primal, psychotic-quality anxiety that predates concepts like loss or separation.
This is where the profound clinical implications begin to unfold. If an individual’s early environment was characterized by repeated impingement, their personality may be built not on a foundation of continuous being, but on a continuity of reactions to that which intrudes. To survive, the infant must prematurely adapt, developing a false self that is compliant and attuned to the needs of the other, while the true self — the core of spontaneous, creative life — remains hidden and isolated for its own protection.
Winnicott brings this understanding directly into the consulting room with his crucial insight on omnipotence. He states:
“Changes come in an analysis when the traumatic factors enter the psycho-analytic material in the patient’s own way, and within the patient’s omnipotence.”
This is a statement of immense technical importance. It means that healing doesn’t happen when the analyst, from a position of expertise, tells the patient a historical truth (“Your mother was not good enough...”). Change happens only when the patient can reclaim the experience as their own, experiencing it as if it arises from within — in terms of projection. An interpretation, no matter how accurate, becomes just another impingement if it lands before the patient is ready to generate it. The analyst who “knows too much” and anticipates the patient’s needs too perfectly risks repeating the trauma of the “too good” mother, whose perfect attunement robs the infant of the chance to signal a need and feel the satisfaction as their own creation.
The analyst’s task, then, is to first create a frame that functions as a holding environment: reliable, predictable, and, most importantly, non-impinging. Our most powerful tool is often not the brilliant interpretation, but the discipline of waiting — allowing the patient the space to be, to play, and eventually, to author their own experience. In this space, both trauma and goodness can finally be brought into the sphere of the patient’s omnipotence and be claimed, perhaps for the first time, as their own.
Ultimately, Winnicott redefines the therapeutic task not as an act of expert knowing, but as an act of disciplined waiting. He challenges us to resist the urge to “fix” or “explain” — actions that so often repeat the very impingements that caused the original harm. The question his work leaves us with extends far beyond the consulting room: in our relationships with others, how often are we truly holding a space for them to be, and how often are we simply asking them to react to us? Herein lies his great paradox: the most authentic self — the core we feel is uniquely ours — is not an achievement of rugged independence, but the outcome of a profound and successful dependence. In a world that champions self-creation, his work gently poses a more fundamental question: Was there ever a space safe enough for a self to be in the first place?
The Beginning
For at least fifteen years, the desire for formal psychoanalytic training has been a quiet, persistent hum beneath the surface of my academic and clinical life. It was a goal that felt both profoundly necessary and, for a long time, geographically out of reach while I was in South Korea. Yet, through a journey I can only describe as a dialogue between the conscious and unconscious, I find myself here, at the beginning of my candidacy in Adult Psychoanalysis at Columbia. The feeling is not one of fleeting excitement, but something more solid and firm — the deep satisfaction of arriving at a place you have long been traveling toward.
This website, and this first post, marks the beginning of an attempt to chronicle that journey of inquiry in real time.
The foundation of this new chapter is, fittingly, an immersion into the ‘Psychoanalytic Core Concepts.’ It is a return to the source, a re-examination of the principles that underpin a discipline that has evolved dramatically over more than a century. While Sigmund Freud is its unequivocal founder, modern psychoanalysis is not a monolith; it is a rich, multifaceted tradition shaped by countless thinkers across the globe.
What binds these diverse schools of thought, however, is a set of foundational principles that feel as relevant today as ever. My early reflections keep circling back to these core tenets: the understanding that we are all motivated by wishes and fantasies that lie partially outside our awareness; that bringing these motivations into the light expands our very freedom to choose; and that the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a crucial vessel for change, a space to explore the very patterns that keep us stuck.
One of the most compelling aspects of contemporary psychoanalysis, particularly in the United States, is its departure from the rigid orthodoxy of its past. It is crucial not to equate Freud’s personal ideas — written in a specific cultural moment, some of which were flawed from the start — with the validity of the entire psychoanalytic project today. The influx of psychologists into what was once a medically dominated field has infused American psychoanalysis with a renewed emphasis on critical thinking, empirical research, and an appreciation for the mutuality of the therapeutic relationship.
This evolution also brings to light a fascinating paradox within the history of psychoanalysis: the tension between its revolutionary origins and its later reputation as a conservative, elitist establishment. The early analysts were often progressive, even subversive thinkers, critical of societal repression and dedicated to social justice. Freud himself advocated for free clinics and treatment for all, seeing psychoanalysis not just as medicine, but as a tool for cultural critique. It is this spirit of critical, compassionate inquiry — a spirit that challenges assumptions rather than reinforcing them — that I hope to connect with in my own work.
This is just the beginning. My desk is already covered with the foundational papers of different analysts who mainly worked with children/adolescents or adults, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts on their profound contributions in the coming weeks.
Thank you for joining me on the first step of this inquiry. I look forward to the conversation.