On Selfhood and the Development of Ego Structures in Infancy

René Spitz's investigations on the development of the ego in infancy raise certain issues which suggest that psychoanalytic theory has suffered a grave limitation and given rise to much confusion by having developed on a foundation of unexamined assumptions regarding infantile perception. Taking Spitz's work from which he has drawn general conclusions in a fairly recent book29 as my point of departure, I will critically examine some relevant features of infantile perception; and I will draw some important inferences regarding the course of the infant's experiences and psychic development which, I believe, more adequately explain the facts revealed by Spitz's and others’ empirical studies.

Spitz's central findings concern the infant's “smiling response” to an adult's face, usually beginning in the third month of life. He regards it as marking the emergence of the “rudimentary ego” and variously characterizes this event as the separation of the ego from the id, the conscious from the unconscious,29g or the psychic from the somatic;29n the beginning of thought processes;29g the onset of the reality principle;29f and more inclusively the point of transition from an “objectless stage of undirected activity to that of ego-directed structured [and intentional29c] activity.”29i These determinative qualities are implied by such features as the infant's beginning to differentiate his own sound from that of others, as by imitating his own sound in babbling monologues, and by “volitionally and deliberately”29j signaling his needs.