You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
1. The infant and the maternal care together form a unity (1960a, 39.) […] The unit is not the individual, the unit is an environment-individual set-up. The centre of gravity of the being does not start off in the individual. It is in the total set-up (1952, 99).
1.1 According to this thesis a good enough environmental provision in the earliest phase enables the infant to begin to exist, to have experience, to build a personal ego, to ride instincts, and to meet with all the difficulties inherent in life (1956, 304).
2. It would be wrong to put the instinctual gratification (feeding etc) or object relationship (relation to the breast) before the matter of ego organization (i.e infant ego) reinforced by maternal ego. (1960a, 49) There is no id before ego (1962a, 56).
2.1 It is necessary to postulate an unintegrated state out of which integration takes place. The infant that we know as a human unit, safe in the womb, is not yet a unit in terms of emotional development. If we examine (this) from the infant's point of view (although the infant is not there, as such, to have a point of view), unintegration is accompanied by unawareness (1954-67b, 116).
2.2 The ego is based on a body ego, but it is only when all goes well that the person of the baby starts to be linked with the body and the body-functions, with the skin as the limiting membrane. […] The ego initiates object-relating (1962a, 59).