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In the earliest postnatal stage it is difficult to disentangle the nuclei of functions that will later serve the ego from those we attribute to the id. Also, it is often hard to decide what part of it could already be described in terms of mental functioning… It is clear that there is no ego in the sense we use the term for later stages; what the state of the id is at that level is unknown.
–HEINZ HARTMANN (19, p. 166)
As psychic functioning emerges and develops, motor apparatus available at birth as well as those maturing later are put into the service of drive discharge, the taming of drives, and adaptation to reality (9), (12), (14), (15), (16), (18), (19), (27), (40), (41), (49), (50). The newborn has at his disposal only primitive methods of regulation which do not permit satisfaction of his needs. His needs cannot be gratified nor wishes fulfilled without the help of his mother's ego, which organizes and tames the drives. The mother lends the child her regulatory apparatus and so prepares him for a more refined use of motility. Only when he has learned to control his body independently of his mother can he begin to adapt to the exigencies of reality.
Motor apparatus for taming of drives have a greater affinity to the ego than those serving discharge of drives. Mechanisms