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The first point which springs to mind on reading this paper is that the close study of the various stages of Freud's thinking on very early psychological states and processes, together with the study of present-day post-Freudians, is an important challenge for analytical psychologists. Refining conceptual tools is continually necessary, and Fordham's examination of his own and of others' metapsychology makes an important contribution towards throwing light on our beginnings as human beings.
The challenge is not merely the intellectual one—although it certainly is that—to follow his thinking and to keep up with it; it is the more extensive one of implicitly urging Jungians to study the work of members of other schools with a view to re-appraising the validity of archetypal theory and consequently to be able to move with ease to and fro between the various conceptualizations, whether the focus is on research or on clinical practice.
At the present stage of research into the subject, consideration of Fordham's paper and of other important past and current views results for me at least in the opinion that direct studies of infants and children, in both normal and pathological situations, must be pursued concurrently with the study of the infant in the adult, as this infant emerges during the analyses of adults.