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The world as experience belongs to the basic world I-It. The basic word I-You establishes the world of relation.
Relation is reciprocity… inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.
Martin Buber
In his paper “Mirror-role of Mother and Family in Child Development” (1967), D.W. Winnicott assigns a special significance to the mirroring function of the mother's face in the development of the child's self. He bases his ideas on the observation of the infant-mother-relationship as well as on reconstructions from his experience with adult patients who had regressed to the dependence of infancy.
“What does the baby see when he or she looks at the mother's face? I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself. In other words the mother is looking at the baby and what she looks like is related to what she sees there. All this is too easily taken for granted. I am asking that this which is naturally ‘done well by mothers who are caring for their babies shall not be taken for granted. I can make my point by going straight over to the case of the baby whose mother reflects her own mood or, worse still, the rigidity of her own defences. In such a case what does the baby see? Of course nothing can be said about the single occasions on which a mother could not respond. Many babies, however, do have to have a long experience of not getting back what they are giving. They look and they do not see themselves. There are consequences. Firstly, their own creative capacity begins to atrophy, and in some way or other they look around for other ways of getting something of themselves back from the environment”.
In the same paper, Winnicott (1967) describes what happens when the mother's face does not function as a mirror with its extreme consequences of an experience of menacing chaos by the baby. The baby may then react by withdrawal into itself or it may just look at the world in order to perceive.
“A baby so treated will grow up puzzled ab