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OTTORANK (1945) WROTE, "It is in the act of willing that the human creature becomes creator, both of himself and of those products of his efforts."
Will is the taken for granted thrust for life which we see in the baby who, just learning to walk, falls, gets up gleefully, falls again and who, unable to manage his way to Mother fast enough in this fashion, drops to his knees and scurries to her side. Rapprochement re-fueling is also an act of will.
From the earliest years of life, the developing individual attempts to master challenges. The sense of mastery is closely related to individuation and autonomy. The child who builds and rebuilds his precariously balanced tower of blocks exhibits will in action, and the joy of mastery is his reward. Mastery says, "I can do it!" Will is the energy and determination that does it. Autonomy says, "I can do it all my myself, " and is an expression of the child's individuation and of his pleasure in his awareness of that process. It is a pleasure that is closely tied to the exercise of will and the achievement of mastery.
We see manifestations of will in incredible places and under incredible circumstances, often in acts of heroism. The will to live can sometimes make the difference between actual life or death. Will can also be perverted. We see it in the bag lady whose fierce independence, which we ascribe to her paranoia, leads to her freezing to death in the cardboard house she built for herself on the streets of New York City.
The clinical relevance of will should not be underestimated. The terms aggression and libido refer to innate energies that are genetic