Notes For The Formation Of A Model Of Infant Development

I have been asked to start off this year's discussions of the model that is implied in current ideas. I will attempt to do so, though I have tended to resist model-building on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence to build on. Since the evidence from mother-infant observation has accumulated I have felt different, but I do not think I am able to present you with a coherent statement and I regard what I shall say as notes for beginning to construct a model. You may well say that I have already defined a model using Jung's concepts of the ego, the archetypes, and the self. Reading through that now, there is not much that I would go back on, but I was then, and continue to be, aware that it needed filling out and that may now be possible.

I should state once again why I found Klein's work especially helpful. It was not only that she adopted the concept of unconscious fantasy, not only the facts of experience which she discovered, not only how she invented a method of analysing children, but also that she introduced the idea of ‘positions’. In doing that she recognized that the patterns attained in infancy and childhood were not just states to be left behind and superseded by more mature structures, but were meaningful patterns which could themselves mature and form the basis for experiences throughout the life of an individual (Klein 1957).

Now that is a concept which not only fits in with the idea of maturation but is also in line with Jung's thinking about meaning and the importance of ongoing processes outlined in his concept of individuation.

I will now consider the ideas which I first introduced in 1947. The first of these, which causes difficulty to others as well as to myself, is that of the primal self. At first I called it the original self, but the self is, by definition, always original in that it represents the basic nature of the individual, and what I was seeking to define was the