Some Embryological Neurological, Psychiatric and Psycho-Analytic Implications of the Body Scheme1

This paper is an attempt to do little more than survey several sciences that deal with facts which have to be integrated to build up a concept of a real ego—or body scheme (B.S.)—as it will be referred to in this paper. The material given, especially in the psycho-analytic section, together with my own numerous comments, is so brief that it will need to be elaborated in further papers.

The problem of the nature of the 'reality ego' is being brought forward chiefly for three reasons. First, it is related to attempts at clarifying the conception of early development and the implications of early development on later life. Anything that may add to the clarity of this recurrent topic should be of some little value. Secondly, this problem furnishes, I think, a fruitful field for co-operative research amongst embryologists, neurologists, psychiatrists and psycho-analysts. Such co-operation can deal with observations made on the same persons or can deal with the best method of formulating and describing the facts observed by different observers in different persons. The aim should be to use as few new terms as possible, and the use of different terms for the same facts observed by different types of observers should be avoided. Some proposed topics of research may lead to widening the acceptance of psycho-analytic theory—others may lead to new knowledge. It is to this latter view that the problem of the B.S. may be related. The third, and most important reason of all for discussing these problems is my increasing conviction that a new orientation as to what has been formulated as the relation between the id and the ego is necessary. There is no doubt about the gradual enlargement of psycho-analytic views of the importance of what is unconscious and of what can become conscious. There is doubt regarding the difficulties we have perhaps created for ourselves by trying to clarify a relationship between the psyche and the soma, between the body and the mind, between