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The assumption of an original state of mother-infant unity is now widely accepted as a fact of individual psychic development. That
assumption is shown here to incorporate a concept of merging. Merging was originally advanced and understood as a primitive intrapsychic activity whereby the early ego blended sensations and impressions from diverse and nondiscriminated sources. It has become confused with an alleged capability of two individuals to "merge" to some extent, based on processes which are either more primitive than, and developmentally anterior to, perception via the senses (Kohut, 1966), or (Loewald, 1981) existent in a realm of "psychic fields" beyond the observable events of human physiology. The distinction between merging and the fantasy of merging has been explicated.