ABSTRACT
Just as the general development of the child’s body depends on nourishment by the mother, so the development of its psyche, of its ego-Self relationship depends on the psychic nourishment given by the mother figure. Where child and mother still form an undifferentiated identity, the primal relationship stands at once for the child’s relations to its own body, to its Self, to the thou, and to the world. The foundation of automorphous Self-consciousness is a positive ego-Self axis, an initially unconscious experience of the harmony of the individual ego with the totality of its nature, with its constitutional make-up, or in the last analysis, with the Self. A normally positive primal relationship results on the one hand in an attitude of confidence toward the human environment and one’s own body, and on the other hand in unquestioning confidence in the Self.
