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THE CENTRAL AIM of this book has been to describe the development of the infant's sense of self. I have tried to infer the infant's likely subjective experiences by considering the newly available experimental findings about infants in conjunction with clinical phenomena derived from practice. In this sense, it is a step towards a synthesis of the infant as observed and as clinically reconstructed, in the form of a working theory of the development of domains of self-experience.
The value of this working theory remains to be proved, and even its status as a hypothesis remains to be explored. Is it to be taken as a scientific hypothesis that can be evaluated by its confirming or invalidating current propositions, and by spawning studies that lead elsewhere? Or is it to be taken as a clinical metaphor to be used in practice, in which case the therapeutic efficacy of the metaphor can be determined?
It is my hope that it will prove to be both. As a hypothesis, this view calls attention to a variety of areas in which more experimentation is needed—in particular, studies on episodic memory and the role of affect in organizing experience, descriptive and theoretical efforts at providing a taxonomy of preverbal experience, and especially, renewed efforts to develop descriptive means to identify and trace interactive patterns across their developmental transformations. Also needed are prospective studies that test its hypothesis that age-specific