**2. Anthropological basics and mother-infant research**

The intrauterine development of the cerebral cortex occurs in exact stages. Each developmental step is a vulnerable period, which is sensitive to insults rendering the brain susceptible to structural malformations and functional impairments [8]. Neurogenesis shows billions of neurons being produced during the development of the central nervous system. It mainly occurs at the inner edge of the neural tube wall, later ventricles, and spinal cord. Cell division begins once the neural tube has closed at 4–5 weeks after conception, which is 6–7 weeks of gestation. Most neurons are formed at 12–18 weeks of gestation. Around 200 billion neurons are produced in the human brain, and 40 billion in the neocortex alone, of which the half are

#### *Challenges for Behavioral Neuroscience: Prenatal, Postnatal, and Social Factors DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85368*

eliminated during the maturation process, resulting in a final number of 100 billion neurons at 40 weeks in full-term infants. Maternal stress during the first trimester has been linked to an increased risk of pathology, suggesting that the expression of genes in early fetal life is influenced by external factors, leading to behavioral and cognitive malfunction or to psychiatric disorder like schizophrenia [8]. Stressinduced reduction of neurons in late fetal life is probably associated with increased damage of neurons. Adding to it, the conspicuous findings on correlations of maternal mental disorders in pregnancy to the child's subsequent psychic development can be examined from different perspectives, as can psychic development within a broader context.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, there is a perinatal constant of originary separation as inscription of lack within the ego. It is a separation of the ego from the developing subject through "objet petit a." The object, the so-called other, is the object-cause of desire. It is the driving force, which makes the subject seek something, organically mirrored in the mesocortical and mesolimbic seeking systems of the frontal lobe. The subject in encountering the object experiences entering the Real beyond symbolization. If it was not for physiological prematurity in humans [24], one might argue that human seeking is merely for reasons of expansion, or exploring. Still, it is originary separation adding to physiological prematurity, which seems to induce primary "homelessness" in *Homo sapiens* [7]. The subject comes to exist through seeking only.

While German pioneer of psychosomatics Thure von Uexkuell gave point to the tuning of inner and outer world in animal life, in humans the relation to nature is flawed, or altered ("altéré"). It is altered, Lacan noticed, "through a certain dehiscence (*déhiscence*) of the organism internal, through a primordial discord (*discorde*) (…), as is shown in the signs of discontent and in physical incoordination in the first months of the newborn. The objective rationale of the anatomical imperfectness of the pyramidal system (…) confirms this view, which we formulate as obtaining true specific prematurity of birth in humans" [25]. Along such an anthropological constant, it should be common ground to assume biological and sociopsychological aspects to be relevant to human development.

The biological aspect refers to instinctual life in connection with separation. Anxiety is the most basic of experiences and can be reactualized at any time. Such a reactualization of anxiety figures in anxiety of the cut ("coupure"): it is in cutting, dissociation, separation [26], which is first and foremost in birth, and then in castration and punishment. Although the latter belong to the sphere of the Symbolic, they actualize the first, stemming from the sphere of the Imaginary. As Catherine Malabou points out, death is prefigured in castration. Castration anxiety does not primarily represent the loss of a specific object but rather the indeterminate threat of separation, of a cut. In connection with repetition compulsion and the "fort/da" game in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" [27], the anticipation of separation from the self is a primal motive ("Ur-Angst"). Any trauma experienced is in terms of such psychodynamics, namely since probably "all events—even 'real' or traumatic events—ultimately occur at the heart of the psyche's separation from itself (…)" [26].

The psychological aspect refers to symbolization through employing language in human development after the early mother-infant stage has been passed through. At that stage, it is about basic trust ("Ur-vertauen") in order to overcome mechanistic thinking ("pensée opératoire") and alexithymia in the infant, and the Imaginary has provided space for the infant to develop. Symbolization will increasingly enter the Imaginary, over-writing the experiences the infant has made before. Ludwig Janus has called attention to the concept of transcription, or transliteration ("Umschrift"), occurring from one developmental stage to another, which Freud in a letter to Wilhelm Fliess remarked in 1896 [28]**.** However, the failing of symbolical over-writing, i.e., of restructuring or rewriting of the Imaginary, can be a marker of psychosis [29], or, on the imaginary-organic pole, of asymbolic conversion [30]. In "The Interpretation of Dreams" [12], Freud describes dreams as expressions of the primary process, in which wish fulfillment is executed. Thus, dream, delusion, and confabulation and other psychosis-like disorders of thinking can be viewed as working temporarily in lieu of the demands of the frontal lobe control system.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, disorder is the result of quite a normal struggle for conflict solution in differing gradations of primary, i.e., preverbal, processual thinking, and secondary, i.e., verbal, processual thinking. Pathology can be read in gradations of normalcy. Outer stressors can trigger a reactualization of preverbal, i.e., pre- and postnatal affects [7]**.** These encompass many factors contributing to compromise conflict solution. Disorder will take the very gradation the subject is susceptible of, only to produce as little conflictive tension as possible. At preverbal stages, disorder will mainly be body disorder; conversion can take place before any symbolization is possible.

At this point, the seemingly societal decline of symbolic references might make any structural framing, i.e., inner positioning, difficult to achieve [29]. Inner positioning can be taken as being connected to outer positioning in its literal sense: as an example, the ancient Greek "polis" would be a place of enabling positioning for—a few select—people to grow into thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. For them, it would provide space and structure to developing thought and concept. A frame would be provided in which personal relations could grow into becoming the background of successful development [31]. In contrast, today's ever-existing interpellation to people manifests in a very concrete societal trend of commodified relations calling for even less inner positioning, adding to, and retroacting on, the withdrawal of sustained societal structure, rendering more and more impossible people participate in major social achievements [32]. Such a trend might also compromise psychic functioning of parents and mothers-to-be severely. It might be the phenomenon of "new morbidity" in infants, which is in the trend toward early functional and psychic disorders and toward chronification, closely associated with this societal trend. At any rate, biological and psychological aspects of human development show humans to be prone to dysfunctional internal conflict processing, probably even more when obscure personality traits seem to be promoted [33], while virtual media foster the loss of sense of reality [34]. Such depravation can be seen in the phenomenon that present-day western societies increasingly call for behavioral and experiential conformity: changing its character, the issue of diversity becomes an interpellation of conformity. Depravation retroacting on poor psychic structure in people might prevail for generations [15], especially when a societal mode of too much freedom in some areas and too much restraint in others takes effect. It would be worthwhile examining how the organic substructure of psychological functioning and societal superstructure are intertwined, and how the "culture of commodification" [35] affects the mother-infant relationship. Looking at research on mirror neurons [36], it is not out of the question that such processes affect subject development on a macrolevel beyond the microlevel of mother-infant relations.

On a microlevel, especially postpartum depression in mothers has been the subject of extensive research investigations [37–39]. As is widely known by now, in interaction with their newborns depressive mothers show decreased responsiveness, increased passivity and/or intrusiveness, increased withdrawal, and decreased expression of positive emotions, and they tend to regulate the effects of their newborns in an insufficient way. Moreover, Papoušek and von Hofacker [40] have generally pointed out the connection between psychopathology traits in mothers and maladaptive patterns in their intuitive competencies. Correlations of maternal

#### *Challenges for Behavioral Neuroscience: Prenatal, Postnatal, and Social Factors DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.85368*

mental disorders in pregnancy to the child's subsequent psychic development [41] are often conspicuous, yet by no means automatic. Such are certainly individual and can be influenced. Infant mental health observations could show slight but distinct negative influences of infant crying and sleeping problems on the child's subsequent social development [42]; infants' regulatory problems contribute substantially to external and internal psychic problems in early childhood [43]. Adding to recent behavioral oxytocin research [44] of the human "attachment system," from a perspective of behavioral neuroscience, it would be worthwhile exploring the testosterone-perspective of the human "lust system," and the dopamine-perspective of the human "love system."

Familial strain of different kinds can lead to dysfunctional relational patterns; missing or inadequate internal educational models in parents can have a similar effect [45]. As to intuitive parental competencies, it has become evident that intrapsychic and interpersonal factors can compromise the expression of these. Likewise, it must be assumed that the level of expressing such competencies might be dependent on social factors. This issue has widely gone unrecognized [15, 46]. Social factors viewed from a microperspective give way to a questionably individualized concept in which societal motion, e.g., toward fragmentation and irrationality through anomic tendencies, is neglected. It should not be surprising to see irrationality increase with too many choices [47]; any compromising of the formation of psychic function will lead to people's attempts at escaping mentalization. Given mentalization is the key to at least some of parental competencies issues, more are still pending; e.g., the capability of executing egofunctions may have developed in an individual, but may not be expressed. At any rate, in a perspective of mentalization as basic ego-function, such capability is a precondition of role-taking and changing of perspectives. Empathy corresponds with this function and is often missing, especially in somatoform disorder. In practice, somatoform disorders are often diagnosed as functional syndromes [48]; i.e., somatization shows in body disorder. Alexithymia often accompanies somatoform disorder; it should also be viewed in a context of societally induced personality issues.

Parents´ cause attributions often reveal such a connection. In general somatoform disorder, from both older children and parents, psychosocial cause attributions are more often the case than in, e.g., asthma bronchiale to which rather genetic, external, and somatic causes are attributed [49]. Also, there are only moderate matches of subjective disorder beliefs in older children and parents: preframed attribution questionnaires generate higher scores of matches than halfopen qualitative explorations do [50]. Generally, high diversity in parents' knowledge and cause attributions of their children's symptoms [51] invites to improve communication on many levels. Although it is obvious that pathological personality traits are associated with the ability to understand emotional states of others [52], social cognition aspects, of which mentalization is mostly in focus, are on a microperspective of family interaction. Although subscribing to a psychodynamic perspective, hereby only a small aspect is examined. In case that identity issues play a significant role, identification presupposes an original to identify by [53]. It has to meet requirements of highly differing concern [54] and has to do with subjective experience of identity [55].
