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To have the chance to reflect on the papers of Drs. Beebe and Demos is an enriching experience. Each of their papers has been developed from sets of data that are as close to the empirical beginnings from which the self is organized in postnatal life as can possibly be studied. Each grapples with the four fundamental questions that grip all of us: (1) On what basis do we describe precursors of a phenomenon as elusive and complex as the self? (2) In terms of observable behaviors, can we correctly infer inner experience? (3) How is inner experience welded into the psychic structure we call the self? (4) What are the changes in organization and representation that both inner experience and the self as a psychic structure undergo over the longer term spans of development?
Both presenters couched their work and their thinking within the systems perspective, each particularizing dimensions of inner experience that belong in different time domains and involve different functional and regulatory subsystems of the human organism. At this point, most of us who are dealing with the complexities of early development anchor our thinking in the systems perspective. It must be realized that one of the drawbacks of taking a systems viewpoint of organization is that the living system ultimately includes everything—particularly the entire range of time dimensions within which interactive structures of mutual influence can be organized. In regard to this more inclusive system we can ask, What are the larger regularities, and the more extensive time spans within which Beebe's interactive structures of microsecond mutual influence fit, and within which Demos's affect systems are organized?