Home
- Articoli sull'Infanzia e l'Adolescenza
The Process of Constructing the Self and Its Relation to Psychotherapy
di Patricia M. Crittenden
pag. 8 di 19
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.