Jointness is a term (R. Solan 1991) in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic theory, describing a new look at normal object relation that takes place from the beginning of life.
Jointness represents an encounter between mother and infant, psychotherapist and patient, or any partners experiencing simultaneously mutual intimacy, while concomitantly safeguarding separateness.
As a result, baby might gradually develop his/her own boundaries and acknowledge those of his or her object and might invest their own innate abilities to participate in human interactions and enjoy relationships ("motivational systems," Emde, 1988).
It is the mother who imprints the quality and the intensity of the rapprochement-separation balancing process in their relationship, while both of them are fully invested in each other.
In symbiosis, baby and mother behave and function as though they were "an omnipotent system - a dual unity within one common boundary" (Margaret Mahler, 1968, p. 201).