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The preceding considerations of the genesis of the self (Meissner, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c) and related reflections on the role of language in the development of the self (Meissner, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d) have a significant degree of relevance and implication for the further understanding of the analytic relation and process. These developmental processes and dynamics provide a basis for understanding the role of the self in the therapeutic interaction. As we have seen, while the rudiments of the self arise early in the developmental course, they undergo differential patterns and courses of elaboration and evolution. The concept of the self I am reflecting on in these essays is the self-as-person, embracing the totality of the human person, including all dimensions, characteristics, and properties that we would regard as belonging to the human person, including both body and mind (Meissner, 2001). The self as such is envisioned as a unified and coherent entity describable in distinguishable dimensions articulating aspects of its heterogeneous composition, functioning, and activity.
These component aspects were described in the first paper in this series (Meissner, 2009a). To recapitulate briefly, the composition of the self-as-person can be considered from a variety of perspectives: namely, the body self (the self as embodied and as an integrated and internally unified and integrated composite of mind—body), the self-as-agent (the self, coextensive with the body self, considered from the perspective of its functioning as internal source of all of its actions, whether physical or mental, voluntary or involuntary, physiological or personal, conscious or unconscious),