ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author highlights several specific features of the infant psychological development that are important to understanding the development and functioning of the mind. The type of thinking that is most readily available to the infant at its own level of development differs in significant respects from other types of thinking that are readily available to the adult, for which reason the author have chosen to refer to it by a special terminological phrase, namely the work of imagination. The work of imagination is originally set in motion by the work of mothering and then, in the ideal case, works in tandem with it to produce still more elaborate and satisfactory contextualizations. Whereas the work of objectification produces realities, the work of imagination makes relationships possible. Nevertheless, both of these, realities and relationships, are to be understood as differentiations within the original, primevally undifferentiated flow of uncontextualized experience.
