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1. Ego development, like libidinous development, is partly based on processes of maturation. And of the ego aspect, too, […] we have to consider it as a partly primary, independent variable, not entirely traceable to the interaction of drives and environment; also that it partly can become independent from the drives in a secondary way. That is what I mean by the terms primary and secondary autonomy in ego development (1950a, 12).
1.1 Not all the factors of mental development present at birth can be considered part of the id. Both the ego and the id have developed, as products of differentiation, out of the matrix of animal instinct (1950b, 79). We suggest [the] assumption […] of an undifferentiated phase during which both the id and the ego gradually are formed (1946, 19). The ego grows and develops into a specific organ of adaptation and of organization, and the id becomes a partly separate system with its specific characteristics (1948, 379).
1.2 The individual does not acquire all the apparatuses which are put into the service of the ego in the course of development: perception, motility, intelligence, etc., rest on constitutional givens. These components of «ego constitution» deserve our attention just as much as the components of drive constitution (, 101). These apparatus, as well as those that account for the phenomena of memory, are partly inborn; they cannot be traced, in the individual, to the influence of the instincts and of reality, and their maturation follows certain laws which are also part of our inheritance (1952, 18).