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… In this present view the child's primary or original self is disrupted by birth but becomes
re-established again. During maturation disrupting and re-establishing of the self occurs again and again due to deintegrative-integrative forces. After the first disruption the self becomes united with the mother in the phase of what he calls ‘the nursing couple’, a phase which E. Neumann has described as ‘mother child unity’.
Out of this union further deintegrations occur and structures develop which enable the infant to ‘manage’ objects, both good and bad ones, first the mother's breast, then such objects as pieces of rag, later soft dolls or animals. These activities involve early attempts at representations until the child's ego becomes established at about two years of age and the separation-individuation phase starts. Fordham here refers to Jung's definition of individuation as the ‘process of forming and specializing the individual nature and the development of consciousness (the ego) out of the original state of identity’.
The oedipal conflict is then discussed in the family setting, followed by latency and adolescence which leads into the social setting. Chapters on analytical therapy and symbol formation complete the book.
Throughout the maturation process of the child the self underlies the forces of deintegration-integration. Fordham stresses the instability of the self over against the view of it as unchanging (p. 100), and its synthetic activity during infancy and childhood. This is an interesting viewpoint worthy of reflection by other child therapists.
Another new aspect of Fordham's concept of the self emerges in its irrelevance to religious experience during maturation. He points out that Jung brought the self into relation with theological speculations about ultimate reality which in his view do not belong to the maturation process. We may find that behind the system in which theology tried to conceive the irrational Jung recognized the primordial experien