ABSTRACT

In this chapter and the next we turn from experience forms in which we have little or no sense of l-ness to those in which firstperson experience is firmly established. The capacity for l-experience identifies the second of the two periods into which psychoanalytic psychology divides early development. In Freud's terms, das Ich (the ego) now takes center stage. In major object relations perspectives whole-object relationships replace interactions of part-selves with part-objects. From Ogden's perspective, the depressive experience mode of adulthood echoes the developments of this period.