On Ego Development

Fordham's paper on “The Origins of the Ego in Childhood” (1957), and the discussions to which it has given rise, have prompted me to record part of the analysis of a four-year-old boy who showed how he became aware of himself as a person with a name.

In his paper Fordham says (pp. 111-12): “We need to assume that almost from the very beginning infants experience in the act of suckling and excreting fantasies which are not differentiated from the physical experience. These fantasy systems are part of the preconscious system and must therefore express archetypes.

“On this basis it can be understood that the so-called libidinal zones are preconscious centres of awareness in which the numinous images first form themselves as fragmentary units—the ego fragments.

“The zones are usually thought of as discrete areas but right from the beginning analogic linkage must be found between them, since fantasy functioning is much looser than differentiated ego functioning.”

This quotation gave me insight into what was going on in my case, since the child's conflicts centred on oral impulses, feelings, and fantasies which led on to anal material. I was particularly struck by the way in which working through the oral fantasies and impulses led to the development of an ego and the formation of boundaries between him and myself. He passed through stages of magical control, to control by naming and deliberate acts.

The first thing that struck me when I was introduced to John by his mother was his strange expression. He was a particularly attractive child with thick fair hair, but when I looked into his face there was no recognition in it, he seemed to look straight through me. I noticed that his expression did not alter when he was looking at his mother; he seemed strained and lost.

Although he had always lived in his own home he gave the impression of being a deprived child. His mother had looked after him herself for the first six months of his life and then she had broken down. After that