The self born in intersubjectivity: The psychology of an infant communicating

Abstract

Introduction The theory of interpersonal communication and its motives In this chapter I shall analyze the condition of a human self around the time of birth, as seen when a baby is in communication with an other. Then I shall trace some important changes that have been recorded in the life of the communicating self through infancy. Communication with persons is possible from birth, and we should not be surprised at this. It is in the nature of human consciousness to experience being experienced: to be an actor who can act in relation to other conscious sources of agency, and to be a source of emotions while accepting emotional qualities of vitality and feeling from other persons by instantaneous empathy. This interpersonal self, this person who breaks the private integrity of the ecological self, splitting its egocenter and reconstituting it as a part of a communication dipole or multipole, is fundamental to the human condition. Nevertheless, our psychological tradition, observing the limited cognitive powers of the newborn and giving great value to the cultivated intelligence of an educated person, has assumed that the mind of an infant is incoherent, with undefined perceptions and incapable of contributing to communication, except to solicit help reflexively for biological functions.