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This panel will be devoted to a consideration of some theoretical aspects of early psychic functioning, a subject to various individual components of which a considerable segment of literature has been directed in recent years. Recent panels at the American Psychoanalytic Association, for example, on The Psychoanalytic Theory of Affects (53), on The Theory of Thinking (3), and a symposium on Anxiety (75), have necessarily led back to the earliest origins of these psychic phenomena. Other discussions concerning early ego functioning, and most recently another panel which considered the origins of superego function (37), also led back of necessity to this earliest phase of life. Moreover, many writings which start out from quite other directions also point inevitably back to this period. For example, studies of borderline or psychotic patients (55), (63), a discussion of the pregenital elements in neurogenesis (64), direct child observations in both health and disease, as well as many specific studies of discrete subjects such as, to cite but one example, when Jacobson (33), (34), (35) attempts to sharpen the concept of the self, all lead to a quest for explanations and origins in the earliest phases of life. Having participated in a number of these separate discussions, it was conceived as advantageous to attempt to amalgamate, if possible, all these individual streams for a unified discussion of some common factors and considerations.
Psychoanalysis has of course always been predicated upon a genetic exploration toward the early years of life, a principle