Psychoanalytic Mommies and Psychoanalytic Babies: A Long View

I offer a retrospective view of the evolving baby metaphor in relational thinking. Early relational critiques of developmental tilt models and the concept of holding in clinical work, amplified by feminist writers, sharply skewed relationalists toward a vision of the patient-as-adult and a view of the analytic dialogue as inherently intersubjective. Bringing my own Winnicottian/relational perspective to this critique, I expanded the notion of holding and proposed a way to bridge Winnicottian holding with a relational perspective by exploring the analyst's participation in establishing and maintaining a holding experience. Here, I review and update this controversy, offering new ideas about holding's clinical function in buffering shame states.