ABSTRACT
Winnicott separated clearly primitive (or early) emotional development from the rest of human development. Primitive emotional development comprises the first six months of life, and these first months are very important. The first stage, which corresponds to early emotional development, is marked by primary narcissism, and therefore there is no object relation, nor is there any psychic structure. This is a fundamental difference between Winnicott and Melanie Klein, who at a given moment in her investigation broke away decisively from the hypothesis of primary narcissism and, further, had always sustained that there exists an ego at the outset. Winnicott postulates a primary state of unintegration and differentiates it from disintegration as a regressive process. The primary state of unintegration provides a basis for producing the phenomenon of disintegration, especially if the process of primary integration fails or is retarded.
