The Process of Constructing the Self and Its Relation to Psychotherapy

Consequently, when either representation is intensively activated, it tends to catapult the infant into immediate self-protective action on the basis of incomplete processing of incompatible procedural and imaged representations. Thus, danger and threat of danger maximize the possibility that (1) erroneous information will be carried forward unchanged and (2) synaptic connections of the neuronal pathway representing the enacted response will be strengthened, thus, increasing the probability and speed of their reactivation in the future. In addition, precortical responding reduces the infant’s experience with cortical processing, thus, failing to facilitate integrative pathways. The second important aspect of parent-infant interaction is its influence on the organization of three generic patterns of implementing these DRMs; the pattern used by a particular infant is determined by the pattern of parental response to the infant’s distress signals. In attachment terms, these become Ainsworth’s ABC patterns of attachment (Ainsworth, 1979). Infants whose distress leads to crying will associate that somatic state not only with its eliciting conditions, but also with the parents’ response. If the outcome is prompt soothing, the somatic experience will not distress the baby unduly (probable Type Bi). But if the outcome is a shouting mother or one who picks the infant up frantically while struggling against her own rising distress, the somatic image may in the future lead, in the first case, to inhibition of display of distress (probable Type A) and, in the second case, to a self-maintaining feedback loop of affect escalation that increases distress (probable Type C). Through this process, some infants learn that cognitive predictions, based on temporal order, yield the greatest safety and comfort with their caregivers; the corresponding behavioral strategy (A1-2) consists of doing what the parents reinforce (i.e., the right thing) and inhibition of negative affect.