ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to provide an understanding of the normal development of mind. It deals with the case of normal development, concentrating upon the ways in which a young child’s acquisition of “mind” is bound up with her growth in understanding “other minds”. A turning point in mental development occurs when the very young child acquires a first insight into the nature of “representation” by becoming aware that there is a distinction between subjective orientations to things and events, and those things and events themselves. The child recognises herself to have her own interests, concerns, desires, intentions, beliefs, and so on, and acknowledges others to have similar kinds of mental state which may differ in content. The theory begins by positing some psychological “givens”. The givens are features of early infancy. The first “given” concerns an infant’s capacity for manifesting and experiencing different forms of relatedness to people and to things.
