Under optimum conditions, the mother caresses and stimulates the whole of her infant's skin, its entire body, enabling it to fuse this skin experience with the other sensory contacts with the mother such as sight and smell. Such very early complete relation to the mother fosters more effective ego development, with a surer sense of ego boundaries, an adequate sense of reality, a greater readiness for ultimate emancipation and independence. Those who have suffered deprivations in such intimacy with the mother are prone to develop distortions in their sensory perceptions of the outer world, with consequent later poor contact with reality.