The role of primary identifications inherited from the early relations with the primary object of care is discussed in terms of how it participates in intrapsychic construction. The author draws primarily on object-relations theories to show how an area of play is opened up at an early stage for identification and disidentification. It is therefore through bodily contact with the mother that the baby encounters the outside world and internally builds up psychic structures from which a subjective view of external life and everything that happens in it emerges. The geography of the external world becomes an intrapsychic cartography and the setting for the internal theatre.