Self development occurs post-natally; we are not born with it.
A sympathetic and revealing account of the life and works of one of the great psychoanalysts of the twentieth century. Winnicott’s location of the self at the core of personality is of particular interest. Winnicott largely discards the ids and egos of other analysts’ theories in the search for the self development process. This starts early, in infancy. It is critically dependent on the primary caregiver, the mother, in Winnicott’s terms. Thus, the newborn has no self to speak of. This must be instantiated as a result of early mirroring interactions with the caregiver. The child can only at that point make sense of its environment and all the objects in it. These objects are then by definition perceived as external. As a result, the child is now ready to participate in the real world. If only Winnicott had had access to 21st century thinking on neuronal networks, …
Link to book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/winnicott/adam-phillips/9780141031507
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