The author cites the prominence of theories that locate serious adult psychopathology in the preverbal infant’s inability to formulate or represent traumatic experience. The work of two such authors, H. Levine and D. B. Stern, is briefly considered. The frame of reference for this investigation is that clinical and academic research findings are highly relevant to psychoanalytic theorizing. It is argued that when such findings are considered, a view of the infant with “primordial and unrepresented” states of mind has little evidence to support it. In fact, research findings summarized herein point to an opposite view: that of the “competent infant,” one with highly accurate perceptual discrimination capacities and an innate ability to register and represent subjective experience in both procedural and declarative memory, even prenatally. Given the infant’s competencies, it seems implausible to hold that representational deficits are at the heart of serious adult psychopathology, which is instead seen to be the result of defensive maneuvers against unknowable and unspeakable truth rather than the absence of a preverbal representational capacity. Current research findings seem to pose a significant challenge for psychoanalytic theories that espouse “primitive mental states”; “unrepresented,” “unformulated,” or “unsymbolized” experience; or “nonconscious” states.

中文翻译：

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表征主观经验的先天能力：婴儿的心智既不是原始的，也不是前表征​​的


作者引用了一些理论，这些理论将严重的成人精神病理学归咎于婴儿无法表达或再现创伤经历。本文简要回顾了两位这样的作者 H. Levine 和 DB Stern 的工作。这项调查的参考框架是临床和学术研究结果与精神分析理论高度相关。有人认为，当考虑到这些发现时，婴儿具有“原始且未被代表”的心理状态的观点几乎没有证据支持。事实上，本文总结的研究结果指向了相反的观点：“有能力的婴儿”，即具有高度准确的知觉辨别能力和在程序性记忆和陈述性记忆中记录和代表主观经验的先天能力，甚至在出生前也是如此。考虑到婴儿的能力，认为表征缺陷是严重的成人精神病理学的核心似乎是难以置信的，相反，这被视为针对不可知和难以言说的事实的防御策略的结果，而不是缺乏言语前的表征能力。目前的研究结果似乎对支持“原始心理状态”的精神分析理论提出了重大挑战。 “未代表的”、“未表述的”或“未象征化的”经验；或“无意识”状态。