The Theory of Child Development by Margaret Mahler

Margaret Mahler was one of the figures of psychoanalysis who made great contributions to the understanding of the infantile mind. She was a physician and pediatrician, but her own experience and some situations she witnessed led her to lean towards analytical practice. In particular, Margaret Mahler’s greatest contribution was to developmental psychology. She succeeded in defining and characterizing the stages a child experiences from birth to early childhood. The child’s relationship with their mother is of utmost importance, according to her theory. Mahler started with Sigmund Freud’s theory of the psychosexual development of the child in order to elaborate on this…