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Although these notes came out of ruminations about asthmatics they have largely turned into conjectures about the vicissitudes of the aggressive drive in the earliest phases of its development.
I would like to discuss the following points:
i.A concept of premastery and its addition to the already established ideas about intake and output in asthmatics.
ii.The importance of the postpartum respiratory experience.
iii.The possibility that premastery experiences at the appropriate maturational phase may be involved in the later ability to channelize the aggressive drive constructively.
iv.The possibility of a link between respiratory experiences and toilet training, particularly in the asthmatic.
v.Some of the vicissitudes of the developmental flow of aggressive energy which occur in the earliest phases of life.
Our material has been culled from analytic observations of adults and children, the direct longitudinal observation of one child for ten years, and postpartum respiratory activity.3
It is regrettable that many of our terms are loosely used. Unfortunately at the moment I am not able to improve on the term 'mastery' beyond relegating it to the more complex differentiated stage of ego development. However, in the interest of clarity we shall utilize a very definite concept of 'pre-mastery'. We shall use the term 'pre-mastery' to connote the utilization of aggressive energy, predominantly by the smooth muscle system, in the form of rhythmic contractile motor movements, to overcome the environment in the interest of survival and adaptation. This takes place during the undifferentiated ego-id phase and seems to be a physiological forerunner of later mastery.