Going beyond exclusive emphasis on aggressive drives and their vicissitudes, the authors define self-care as including libidinal investment in self, capacity to anticipate danger, ability to regulate unsafe impulses, appreciation of mastery, knowledge of the world and of one's limits, capacity for aggression in the service of self-protection,

and object-related tendencies to choose non-destructive, non-threatening others. Self-soothing is distinct from self-care and precedes it; adequate self-care requires representational learning and develops in the context of highly attuned reciprocal interactions involving comforting, limiting, anticipating, and renouncing. It becomes internalized when integrated with self-esteem. Self-care is in dynamic interaction with other developing structures and is especially vulnerable to regression with disruption of parental attachment.