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A developmental line focusing on interest and participation in sports is proposed. The changing role of the body in the development of the ego is considered. The body as an early source of pleasure eventually becomes the site of a source of primordial competence, and by the latency phase, full-fledged competence can be generated by the ego's control of the body in space. Participation in sports and acquisition of athletic skills can follow.
A developmental line includes the interaction of drives and ego. In studying developmental lines, the respective maturational sequences of drives and of the ego must be considered. We assess the effects of environmental pressures or demands as well as the contribution of biology, as reflected in particular strengths of component drives. Essentially, we are assessing the interactive contributions of maturation, adaptation, and structuralization (A. Freud, 1965, p. 64). From this assessment we get a history of an individual's personal accomplishments or of personality delay and/or arrest.
Anna Freud (1978), speaking of multiple determination and the ego's synthetic function, writes:
This [synthetic function] integrates at every stage of a developmental line the various determining factors which are active in it. It forms compromises between them which result in the construction of the respective intermediary stations. The latter are normal and the compromise formations adaptive…. On the other hand, aberrant features in all of the above respects are so frequent that they are almost the order of the day. (p. 105)