Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Part I Introduction
- Part II The concept of an ecological self
- Part III The interpersonal self and its implications
- 8 The self born in intersubjectivity: The psychology of an infant communicating
- 9 On the interpersonal origins of self-concept
- 10 Infants' knowledge of self, other, and relationship
- 11 The role of feelings for an interpersonal self
- 12 Spontaneous communication and the foundation of the interpersonal self
- 13 Autism, affordances, and the self
- 14 Through feeling and sight to self and symbol
- 15 G. H. Mead and Martin Buber on the interpersonal self
- 16 Cognitive science, other minds, and the philosophy of dialogue
- Author index
- Subject index
10 - Infants' knowledge of self, other, and relationship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Part I Introduction
- Part II The concept of an ecological self
- Part III The interpersonal self and its implications
- 8 The self born in intersubjectivity: The psychology of an infant communicating
- 9 On the interpersonal origins of self-concept
- 10 Infants' knowledge of self, other, and relationship
- 11 The role of feelings for an interpersonal self
- 12 Spontaneous communication and the foundation of the interpersonal self
- 13 Autism, affordances, and the self
- 14 Through feeling and sight to self and symbol
- 15 G. H. Mead and Martin Buber on the interpersonal self
- 16 Cognitive science, other minds, and the philosophy of dialogue
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Infants' sense of self and other has been supposed by both attachment theory (Bretherton, 1987; Harter, 1983; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985; Sroufe & Fleeson, 1985) and psychodynamic theory (Emde, 1983; Kernberg, 1976; Kohut, 1984; Mahler, Pine, & Bergman, 1975; Stern, 1985) to be a function of interactions with primary caregivers. Primary emphasis on the influence of interactions on infants' acquisition of self reflects a bias in our theorizing. Winnicott (1965), for example, stated that “there is no such thing as an infant” to underscore the importance of the mother-infant relationship. In nature, of course, there is not only the infant and the mother but also ongoing interactions between infant and mother. Current theories of infants' self-development vary in their emphasis on infants' capacities that reflect normative functioning (e.g., Neisser, 1988, 1991) and those that emphasize individual differences as a function of variability in infants' interactions with their mothers (e.g., Mahler, et al., 1975). Although infants' biological survival depends on caregivers' support, once this support is assumed within an average expectable environment, our thesis is that infants' sense of self and other is related to a number of diverse factors, including species characteristics, the development of infants' capacities, and characteristics of interactions between infants and mothers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Perceived SelfEcological and Interpersonal Sources of Self Knowledge, pp. 185 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
- 1
- Cited by