Self-concept, Self-Esteem and Self-Image - The Human Nature Part 2

Read Part 1 Self-concept, Self-Esteem and Self-Image - The Human Nature Part 1

2 - From Birth to Individual Praxis

Introduction

"The 'existence' of Kierkegaard, is the work of our inner life, past due and unceasingly renewed resistance, temporary failures and precarious victories - work in direct opposition to intellectual knowledge." - "Reason and Violence" -
R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper

Social relationships are the core of the self-concept development. They give the individual a "mental image" of people with whom he interacts.

The only reality we have is people that we find in our head - We as the "OTHER".

Soon the mother-child relationship will be the embryo and the structuring of all subsequent relationships.

So we try to analyze how the structure of affectivity, in the mother-child relationship influences the development of self-concept in its genesis.

"Success as objectification allows a person to insert himself in things, forcing one to overtake it." - "Reason and Violence" -
R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper

From Birth to Individual Praxis

The construction of the object-libidinal as the first structure of affectivity, it is also the first form of the permanent object (cognitive).

This indicates that the inclusion in the world primarily is carried by persons, before reaching cognitively.

The structure of affectivity, fulfill in the inter-relational context of the mother and child and vice versa. The child alternating between hunger (dissatisfaction) and the plenum (satisfaction).

The relationship with the mother will determine this satisfaction-dissatisfaction, whose alternancy the child "feels" in relation to its physiological state and to his mother.

So the mother satisfy (good) or frustrate (bad).

If there is a greater tendency to frustrate that to satisfy the relationship will have pathogenic effects on the child. The mother's response to "order" the child's condition its real achievement.

As such affectivity and intelligence are structured by sensorimotor activity.

From the libidinal object the the Permanet Object

The emergence of anguish in the 8th months (Spitz), marks the predominance of the mother and it is for the child as a unique and distinct relationship from any other.

Cognitively mother is different from anyone else. The mother is read and identified as a system of significant signs for the baby and decoded by this as such.

At first the child can only interpret fixed and not numerous indexes, by assigning them a meaning.

The progressive easing rates with increasingly important changes, do not prevent the mother's identitification

Seen from another perspective, the libidinal object, becomes increasingly more permanent, through the progressive transformation in the reading rates that the baby makes of them . Thus reflecting the representation systems are enriched at the same time as operacionalizing systems.

In the affective part, the libidinal object, such as convergence of all drives, initially lost rapidly due to changes resulting from successive appearances and disappearances of the mother .

So the intermittency of instinctual discharge, causes anguish, resulting from the subject of the loss that gradually evens for the mother acquire more permanence that can be seen in two senses:

- Cognitive point of view, the mother leaves disappearing into the "consciousness" of the child to get out of your visual field, contributing to later build a mental image of the mother.

- The emotional or affective point of view, the mother's presence causes the baby one deep sense of security that appeases the anguish, for what all desire is centered on it.

The mother's presence giving a feeling of well-being to the baby, leads him to look at himself this feeling when the mother is absent (internalized mother).

The absence of the mother presence takes the baby to a state of dissatisfaction, so the baby will claim its presence through cries and shouts.

This feeling of absence, will be the foundation of the emergence of the permanent object, emotional first and then cognitive.

These facts allow us to observe how dependent is the formation of self-construction concept of "internalized mother."

If for Piaget the image is the product of internalized imitation, is imitation not originate in emotional behavior?

Is it that before cognitive-affective distinction between signifiers and meanings, will not be already embryonic?

The mother is identified as prevalent and unique object, its active search during their absence appears as first differentiation between signifiers and meanings.

Thus, it is not what constitutes a "mental image" of the mother, since she is seen "mentally" when the baby search?

Moreover, the durable nature of born feelings about the mother, constitute it as object increasingly permanent.

The child gets the feeling that the absence is not annullement, since the dual relationship continues with the feeling of mother's residence when she is no longer noticeable.

The constitution of the mother as a permanent support of libidinal relations of the baby, puts us to question the desire turned into necessity.

The delay in meeting the need-desire, so repeated frustrations imposed by the neurotic mother repression by his own desire, will help to secure the child in their needs.

Thus the "fixations" arise not as stop in emotional development, but as a repeated expression of a absence period and where subsequent phantomatizations are born.

This suggests that the mother's internalization (the way the child sees the mother) will have important effects on the formation of self-concept and major absences with subsequent pathological consequences , also will influence the development of the self-concept.

Originated in the expression of the need-desire, the imaginary will be constituted and will form the relationship with the Other.

Its key role will be in the child's relationship with the people, it will be the place where comes the desire born in the needs and will structure the progressive relationship between the baby and the mother and then between the subject and others.

Thus affectivity as presumed passage of biological to cognitive, refers to the individual in relation to himself and in relation to other individuals. As Freud points out, is based on the pursuit of pleasure linked to sexuality.

"As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but its flavour;

as men of the world, we hardly know of the existence of the inner world: we barely remember our dreams, and make little sense of them when we do; as for our bodies, we retain just sufficient proprioceptive sensations to coordinate our movements and to ensure the minimal requirements for biosocial survival - to register fatigue, signals for food, sex, defaecation, sleep; beyond that, little or nothing." - Laing, R.D. "The Politics of Experience "

Of Reflexes in the Relationship Systems Mother-Son

The behavior seen as adaptation to the environment in this context involves the relation to people but working out is on a background of hereditary reflexes, and most importantly, the sucking reflex that will act as organizer of subsequent behavior.

The sucking reflex, will serve us to relate the affective and sensorimotor schemes and the passage of the physiological to the psychological.

There is therefore relations between the physiological state (example: hunger), which trigger behavior (example:shouting, crying) and impressions that create something stable: the feelings.

The greater hunger more agitated and disorderly are the behaviors, the more intense the repercussion or the impression in life.

"From the moment of birth, when the stone-age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father have been, and their parents and their parents before them. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities. This enterprise is on the whole successful .

By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves. A half-crazed creature, more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age." - Laing, R.D. "The Politics of Experience "

It seems that the intensity of hunger transforms feelings into emotions, which according to the degree to which rises disorganized behaviors adapted and as stated Pierre Janet, feelings are regulators of behavior and disruptive emotions, but may contribute to its reorganization to better adaptation.

The relationship to the mother may appear figuratively:

The expression of hunger and its appeasement pass through the relationship with the mother and it is her who plays a determinant in the conducts of relationship-adaptation and affectivity.

Also the behavior patterns in relation to objects work within the inter-relationship with people.

Resuming the mother-child relationship can be presented figuratively "good" terminology and "bad" Melanie Klein's mother.

The affective-cognitive structures and relationship are key systems in the child's future as it depends on them the construction of "internalized mother" the factor for th emergency of the Other.

Thus the need for food can be seen as a request and as affective need, than the satisfaction of one is at the same time the other satisfaction.

Various cases can be considered:

1 - "The request is satisfied," creating psychophysiological balance, predisposing the child to a good relationship with the environment and the structure of the world and of itself, by itself.

2 - "The request is imperfectly satisfied," the child has only an imperfect predisposition because there is a remaining need.

3 - "The request is not satisfied," the child is in total unavailability situation, ending in severe psychoses (autisms).

Partial availability creates a dissatisfied application that can influence any later stage of emotional development (anal, phallic, Oedipal or later). One of the most important discoveries of Freud was to explain its implications.

The adaptation is achieved only in measure that affectivity widens.

In view of this work, the exercise of cognitive schemas and their progressive structuring presupposes a satisfaction that even partial will give the child a sense of "ontological security" root of "trust in you." "The I Divided" , R. D. Laing.

The very partial satisfaction leads to the construction of the Other and the world and then himself. The affection-cognitive structures are one and the same reality can not be separated.

These to structure themselves with the underlying sensorimotor schemes form the necessary basis of behavior that structure the action.

The structures of activity are the intelligence that is deep , adaptation.It is the genetic structuring in the affective dimension that influence the affectivity.

The concept of "attachement" well expresses the need for love and competing demand (request). The activities relating to the application aimed respectively efficiency and satisfaction, which operate in a system of reciprocity.

Between birth and 15th month, the pursuit of satisfaction prevails over efficacy. In other words, the essential search is activity satisfaction in effective behaviors.(from conduct fase from birth to 2 years -socialization of conducts)

Effective behaviors between two and 6/7 turn to the satisfaction in relation to people and things.

After seven years the effectiveness of activities designed to organize the world, for the effective conduct and knowledge.(from conduct fase from 2 years to 12 years -socialization of thought)

The action (praxis) aims effectiveness and exercise is also moved by itself.

If activity schemes reach the goal, they give the subject a sense of efficiency which leads them to repeat indefinitely.

The affectivity as energy, feeds the intelligence and in return for its construction and activity feeds affectivity.

Posface to the Chapter or Preface to next Chapter

"In a science of persons, I shall state as axiomatic that: behaviour is a function of experience; and both experience and behaviour are always in relation to someone or something other than self." - Laing, R.D. "The Politics of Experience "

The balanced structure of affection-cognitive genesis, is of utmost importance for the emergence of self-concept, conditioning all its evolution (via looking-glass-self).

The constitution of "internalized mother" (embryo of Other internalized), created in the inter-relationship with the mother, which is necessary for expression of the need-desire, will constitute the Imaginary, that will take shape in relation to the Other.

The action or "individual praxis" seek efficiency and satisfaction, creating a sense of success or failure that respectively will curb the individual's action or will take you to repeat it indefinitely.

The feeling of effectiveness of action, will be express in totalized self-concept structure. Individual Praxis caused by the injection-of-Nothing-the-world (Sartre), which is a necessity in the Total field of Needs, distotalizes the subject in relation to the world, leading to create with it a unique and non-reciprocal relationship.

Man will relate to the materiality by and through other men, verifying this relation the concept of Use value - Exchange value.

In Reciprocity of the relationship or exchange, we become the other as an object and instrument of our goals, but keeping the individual as a product of your product.

The sum of human actions, always mediated by matter, is by on side a totalization, made to matter in human relationships by matter. (Note the similarity to the affective and cognitive development).

Matter as man's denial is however the only totalizing unit history.

"Men can and do destroy the humanity of other men, and the condition of this possibility is that we are interdependent. We are not self-contained monads producing no effects on each other except our reflections. We are both acted upon, changed for good or ill, by other men; and we are agents who act upon others to affect them in different ways. Each of us is the other to the others." - Laing, R.D. "The Politics of Experience "

The relationship of a variety of subjects with the material field, where the praxis emerges by need arises in the relationship of each to the field and the reciprocity between them. This reciprocity appears applied to the concept of need-scarcity.

The realities of the Praxis, make in and by themselves, the interpenetration of a multitude of individuals, organized in a historical totality, product of human labor.

The end of Part 2 - The Lost paradigm or the Establishment of a Theoretical Model

To be Continued.....

Next Chapters

Part 3 & 4 - Praxis of the individual and Matter as Totality

Other Posts on Psychology

Insight as Self Consciousness - Insight as Self Consciousness Insight has a generating mechanism of the Cathartic Process

Adaptation, translation and visual graphics refresh of an article in portuguese made by me and a friend published in the web in 1994 in a site called www.cultkitsch.com and later cultkitsc.org by to-zé s. & charlie777pt

Bibliography (based in some of the books in portuguese)

DOLLE, Jean Marie, "From Freud to Piaget", Moraes

LAING, R.D. e COOPER, D.G., "Reason and Violence", Vozes

LAING, R.D., "The divided Self", Vozes

OPEN UNIVERSITY, "Social Relationships", Part 2

DOLLE; Jean Marie, "To understand Piaget"

ARGYLE, Michael, "The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour", Pelican

PERRET-CLERMONT e ANNE-NELLY, "Construction of Intelligence by Social interaction", Sociocultura

HINDE; Robert A., "Towards Understanding Relationships", AP

PINTO, Jorge Bento, "Sobre a Concepção da Vinculação", Análise Psicológica Nº 1/2 Serie III

LAING; R.D., "The politics of Experience and the Bird-of-Paradise", Vozes

FÉDIDA, P., " Concept and Violence ", Sociocultura

LAPLANTINE, "Ethnopsiquiaty", Vega

MORIN, Edgar, "The Lost Paradigm . The Human Nature", Europa-América

LAING, R.D., "Self and Others", Vozes

Index of the posts

Prelude

Note Treshold

Part 1

1 - The Lost paradigm or the Establishment of a Theoretical Model

- The Subject

- Self-Concept, Self Esteem and Self-Image

- The Looking-Glass-Self

- Socialization

Part 2

2 - From Birth To Individual Praxis

- From Libidinal Object to the Permanent Object

- Of Reflexes in the Relationship Systems Mother-Son

- Afterword to the Chapter or Preface Chapter Later

Part 3 Praxis of the individual and Matter as Totality

3 - Praxis of the individual to Practical-Inert

- Individual Praxis as Totalization

- Human Relations as mediation between different sectors of Materiality

4 - Matter as Totality totalized and a first experience of need

- The Class Being

- Collectives

- Bibliography