IDENTITY AND SELF - IMPLICATIONS OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH FOR THE PSYCHOANALYTIC-THEORY OF THE SELF

Recent findings from research on human development have implications for the psychoanalytic concepts of self and identity. The emerging feeling of selfhood appears to be the precipitate of finely tuned interactive regulations involving mother and child. Similarly, early mirroring processes are shown to have a fundamental significance for the experiential structure of self and identity. The author discusses the new meanings acquired by the identity concept as a result of these investigations. He describes the elementary psychic structures of identity as well as the subordinate regulatory function of the sense of identity.