Separateness Representations in Mothers of Preschoolers in a Sculpting Task: Active Strives in Growth and Resiliency

 Motherhood requires an ability to facilitate the child’s emergence of the sense of self in terms of separateness and connectedness. This development involves thepsychological process of differentiation so the child can become an autonomousindividual (Blos, 1985). The present study explored mother’s representations ofseparateness from the mother’s viewpoint, via a clay-sculpting task of a mother and child. Parenting representations refer to the parent’s mental world as conceptualized by attachment theory (George & Solomon, 2006) and object relations theory (Stern, 1995). Parenting representations are cognitive-affective constructs encompassing the parent’s perceptions of his/her self as a parent, the parent’s child, and their relationship. They include conscious verbal facets along with unconscious non-verbal facets (George & Solomon, 2006). Being aware of our parental representations may encourage parental mentalization, which is defined as the parent’s ability to reflect and understand his or her child’s internal experience, and one’s own experience as a parent (Slade, 2005).