The Development of the Child's Sense of his Sexual Identity

In his introduction Calvin F. Settlage referred to the psychoanalytic concept of identity and reviewed a panel on this subject held in 1957, reported by Rubinfine. At that time, Phyllis Greenacre defined identity as having two parts: first, a sense of oneness or of being a unit; second, a sense of uniqueness or having differences which distinguish oneself from others. She stressed that the sense of identity is forged in the context of relationships with others because comparison is necessary for it to evolve and because observation regarding the self is made both by the person himself and through the eyes of others. She further underscored the importance of early tactile and visual experience, feeling that the face and genitals are of special importance to the sense of identity because of their high degree of differentiation in relation to other body parts. She also noted the problem of relative lack of visibility of the genitals in the female.

In his contribution to the panel, K. R. Eissler saw the sense of identity as based upon the ego's capacity to experience itself as a continuum.

Margaret Mahler laid down two conditions necessary for the organization of the ego and the neutralization of drives leading to the establishment of a sense of identity: first, the enteroceptive-proprioceptive stimuli must not be so continual and so intense as to prevent the formation of psychic structure; second, the symbiotic partner must serve both as a buffer against and as an organizer of stimuli from within and from without the infant. Mahler characterized the body ego as having two basic kinds of self representation: an inner core of body image the boundaries of which face toward the inside of the body and an outer layer of sensory perceptive engrams which help demarcate