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The author examines the infant's experience of restraint at the hands of the adult for insight into the formation of superego nuclei or primordia (to be differentiated from the superego structure). While the role of the earliest forms of physical restraint is as yet insufficiently understood, the connexion of the mental experience of physical restraint with a fuller understanding of psychosomatic illness and hysterical paralyses cannot be overlooked. Restraint by gesture and verbal command which follows lead the child to imitate and identify with the object. Physical imitation probably rooted in phylogenesis has as much a part in producing these behaviour patterns as does identification. They originate in the child's insurgence against his infantile helplessness and serve the purpose of mastery. Later in the beginning of the second year the defence mechanism of identification with the aggressor will appear, notably of the adult's inhibiting 'No', assumed first in gesture form and then verbalized. The child turns his gesture against both himself and the adult. Turning this gesture against the self marks the inception of a differentiating grade within the ego. As shown in the role-playing games of the child, the operation of this function is tried out playfully and its potentialities will be gradually explored in imaginary as well as actual situations. The author assumes that, on the one hand, the intrapsychic conflict between the libidinal and aggressive drives, simultaneously directed towards the love object in this achievement, will ultimately lead to the development of guilt feelings in the course of the second year. On the other hand the necessary condition for the development of guilt feelings is the differentiating grade within the ego which makes it possible to turn one part of the ego against the self.
While at fifteen months the child is able to distinguish and imitate the object's behaviour fairly exactly, the adult's mental processes and affects c