The Emergence Of Ego

In “The Unknown Self” George Frankl outlines the phases of pre-verbal life which contribute to our adult personality. The first phase concerns the relationship between the child’s lips and the mother’s breast. The second phase relates to a refocus of interest into the skin or periphery.

Frankl writes, “The child will be able to have a good feeling of itself and of its own body if it experiences the mother’s embrace, her affectionate touch and her attention”.

The extension of sensitivity from the lips to the entire periphery is the point at which the child begins to experience itself as a distinct entity. It also starts to develop a sense that other bodies exist independently of it – an awareness of externality.

Should the perception of touch be cold, indifferent or depriving the entire process of creating a unique individual with a sense of identity can be disrupted. Incomplete peripheral nurture results in increased muscular tension in the baby and lays the seeds for a sense of alienation from others and the world in total.

Poor experience of infantile connection with the parent generates feelings of meaninglessness. In extreme forms the sense of time and space is also disturbed. More typically this stage can result in a sense of isolation and a history of muscular tension.

Stiffness and awkwardness of movement can be interpreted as repressed rage within the body, which though carefully hidden, never fails to manifest behind a mask of restraint.

From about eighteen months onward the peripheral phase extends to an awareness of vision. A new dimension of self awareness emerges as the child acquires a visual image of itself which reflects the mother’s own image of the child.

Our emotions are manifest in the eyes and they will expand with pleasure or tense with anxiety – they become taut in states of anger in the same way as the lips in the oral phase. The eyes pull back in states of fear producing a visual sensation of darkness but move forward and expand in states of pleasure to create light.

Clearly the warm and loving embrace of others has a critical role to play in establishing a sense of identity and self esteem.

As the child develops and sensory stimulation increases the need arises to integrate the multiplicity of information in order to keep this embryonic sense of self intact. The arbitrating function is Ego.” It is the function that transforms sensations into perceptions and impulses into acts of will”.

The successful conclusion of this phase leads to a sense of purposeful self- consciousness. The Ego attends to thousands of stimuli but selects between them to create psychic equilibrium in keeping with its own self image.

Positive stroking and affectionate nurture are vital for mental health not just in early childhood but throughout adult life. We are a function of the quality of contact we have with others. Touch has a dramatic impact on self esteem because it links us back to our infantile selves.