ABSTRACT
Infantile sexuality, Sigmund Freud's most sensational and "scandalous discovery", describes the exquisite sensitivity of all parts of the infant's body to the regulatory attempts of those who touch and "talk" to them. The early caregivers' competence to regulate and expand the infant's self-concepts works to promote the development of the child's nascent mental structures and processes. Distortions in foundational self-concepts work to complicate the subsequent development of concepts needed to accomplish the two major tasks for the adult: maintaining security and being creative. Adult self-concepts are needed to enjoy and regulate sexual and aggressive feelings and behaviours. Self-concepts occupy the highest nodes in lexical networks. Self-evaluation and regulation involve test-operate-test-exit assessments of differences between concepts containing attributes of one's actual behaviour and concepts containing attributes of ideal behaviour. Concept building continues throughout life with the formation of metaconcepts, groupings of concepts, which comprise complex cognitive operations.
