ABSTRACT
We have reached the point where it is appropriate to discuss the development of an individual personality. Both ego and self arise out of the articulation of innate potentials in response to environmental factors encountered by the individual. If the ego is sufficiently strong to permit free passage of unconscious contents then it itself is strengthened; much of this depends on the quality of early relationships, and the establishment of trust. Central to this is the way in which frustration is met by mother and child. The self, meaning here a subjective feeling of being, continuity and integration, is first experienced by the individual in terms of the presence and feel of his mother as she accepts him as an integrated whole; he experiences his personal wholeness in her perception of his wholeness, in her relating eye. Her capacity to hold together his multiplicity of being and to give him a sense of meaning provides him with a base for subsequent psychic integration. He, in turn, brings to the situation an innate potential to feel whole in himself.
