ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the phenomenological approach to the basic presuppositions of child socialisation. Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the child’s relation to others, his family, and the world around him may serve as introduction to the whole of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, expression, and the sociohistorical world of human institutions. The notion of development is, of course, central to the psychology of the child; it is, however, a complex notion since it implies neither an absolute continuity between childhood and adulthood nor any complete discontinuity without phases or transitions. While rejecting naturalistic reductions of child development, Merleau-Ponty is equally critical of idealist or cognitive accounts of the phenomena of perception, intelligence, and sensory-motor behaviour. The acquisition of the specular image introduces the child into the drama of social life, the struggle with the other, ruled by desire and recognition, even to death.
