Primitive emotional development 1

This chapter presents the thesis that the early emotional development of the infant, before the infant knows himself as the whole person he is, is vitally important: indeed that are the clues to the psychopathology of psychoses. In the transference situation in analysis of psychotics we get the clearest proof that the psychotic states of unintegration had a natural place at a sufficiently primitive stage of the emotional development of the individual. The auto-erotic element is not always clearly of paramount importance and certainly the use of dummy and fist soon becomes a clear defence against insecurity feelings and other anxieties of a primitive kind. In fact the waking life of an infant can be perhaps described as a gradually developing dissociation from the sleeping state. External reality has brakes on it, and can be studied and known, and, in fact, phantasy is only tolerable at full blast when objective reality is appreciated well.