Creation of the Ego

Understanding the conditions of the infant’s world generates an intelligible view of the most important origin of violence. The peculiarity of childhood, which distinguishes it from adulthood, is that the new-born infant does not have a conscious mind but only a subconscious one. Hence it does not have an ego. Its first task is to create one. This creation, which is described below, occurs within the first 12–18 months of life (after this period the ego develops itself for the rest of its life). It is helped and hindered in this task by its parents and other significant adults. Relationships and its individuality are the principle means that the infant uses as its path to acquiring an ego.

However, there is a major difficulty that the infant has to surmount: if these relationships are problematical then they will be reflected in the character and degree of stability of the resulting ego.

The chief factor common to mankind is the time soon after birth when the infant has to begin the process of relating itself to the parents. It begins this process at a stage of its life when it has not fully established its ego. The crystallising ego has to learn to relate whilst it is still being created. The creation of a strong and harmonious ego requires a preponderant amount of loving kindness from the parents. Unfortunately this does not always, or even usually, occur; instead, the stresses and negative states of mind of the parents’ own lives are transmitted to the fledgling ego of the infant, with results that can be disastrous. Some parents deliberately abuse their children, but I consider that unintentional abuse is far more common. Unintentional abuse happens when the adults did not intend to severely frighten the infant. The infant interprets the emotional tantrums or emotional frigidity of the adults as being directed at it. So fear and self-pity are implanted at the core of its evolving ego [²].

What is common to mankind is not a basic human nature but a basic human event, the trauma of infancy.

Violence has several origins, and the most important one is the consequence of trauma that is experienced in childhood, in the time before the ego is fully created and stabilised. Trauma is the main root of violence in the child. By the time that the child has become an adult, its two most common responses to its inbuilt violence are those of resentment and guilt. These two emotions are noticeable, and mask the underlying fear and self-pity. The adult acts out his resentment through the ways that he treats other people. Or else he can keep his violence repressed, thus becoming beset with long-term issues of guilt and depression that seem to have no apparent causes.

The Period of Ego Creation

I consider in detail the time period for the creation of the new ego. When does it begin to be created and how long does this process take?

In the creation of consciousness out of subconsciousness and unconsciousness there are only events and no dates. Linear time (or clock time) is not a part of the subconscious and unconscious minds; events in these minds can only be attached to definite dates if they are associated with particular objective events whose dates are known, such as birthdays.

A deep psycho-analysis can reach back to the time when the ego was in the process of creation, but the psycho-analysis does not reveal any dates for this process. So we have to make inferences of the time period of ego formation from the child’s reactions and achievements, using the results of psychological studies.

There are two limitations to the time period that I accept as indicating the formation of a conscious ego.

1). First I limit myself to an average period. Precocious children are likely to develop an ego earlier than I suppose, and slow learners later.

2). Secondly, we have to avoid depending on automatic responses. When the infant responds to the mother’s smile, this is usually a subconscious reaction and does not necessarily indicate full consciousness. We have to put weight on unusual responses, such as the beginning of language formation and the fear of strangers. Language formation denotes linear (or logical) thinking, and hence requires an ego. Language indicates the possession of a conscious mind. For comparison, the subconscious mind centres on intuitive thinking; it does not use logical thinking but uses only the association of ideas.

Fear is a dominant feature of man’s consciousness, but is usually hidden in the adult by compensatory effects, such as the ease by which anger is generated (anger usually arises in order to mask fear) and by the adoption of a conservative attitude to life. But fear is hidden far more consistently and effectively by a layer of guilt, so that the fear is not an obvious component of adult consciousness. It is this primary reality of fear that provides the susceptibility to infancy trauma. Fear will develop the child’s sensitivity. Therefore the ego will show this fear once it begins to be formed (especially if sensitivity had been developed in previous incarnations or lives on Earth).

According to Schaffer (quoted in Gross, page 550)[³] the infant will gradually develop attachments to significant people over a prolonged period of time. However, the onset of separation distress and fear of contact with strangers is usually quite rapid – this fear becomes evident at about seven or eight months of age. This response of fear to people is a more certain indicator that the ego is forming than the responses of attachment formation. If the infant’s life is happy, then in its attachment formation the transition from subconsciousness to consciousness will be slow and indistinct. But the presence of fear creates sharp boundaries. Therefore, in my view, the creation of the ego in an average infant begins at around seven or eight months of age.

In order to decide when the infant’s ego is fully formed, in terms of a structure of basic beliefs, I turn to ideas on language development.

The period from birth to 12 months of age is usually the pre-linguistic stage of the child. The term “pre-linguistic” is used to indicate that the child has no public, or objective, language – its thinking uses only a purely subjective and private language, such as is indicated by babbling.

The period from 12-18 months is usually the one-word stage. The child uses one word at a time. Its first words are usually private ones and it uses them to label things: it makes up its own words for the teddy bear, the toys and other objects. After a time it begins to use these words consistently – the same word for the same object. Then it slowly begins to acquire a public language: it begins to label things by the words that the parents use to label them. This ability indicates the tentative accomplishment of full consciousness.

On average, a child will acquire a 10 word objective language by the age of 15 months (Nelson, quoted in Gross, page 662). This growth in the development of objective language indicates that the ego has been formed and can now consciously react to its environment. Therefore the ego is fully formed by the time that it is between 12-15 months of age. From now on the ego begins its long process of development and expansion.

Vulnerability of the Ego

The period of about 7-15 months of age is the time in which the average ego is created. What is the value of assuming this period for ego creation? This period is a critical one for the infant. During this time the fledgling ego is most vulnerable to certain forms of psychological disturbance or trauma.

So infant care needs to be at its very best during this time in order to allow the infant to form a stable ego. It is within this period that infancy trauma can easily occur and provide the conditions for later adult madness. Episodes of insanity in adulthood usually indicate that the infant did not create a stable ego.

I mention a difference between my ideas and those of Sigmund Freud. He believed that the Oedipus complex occurred within the first three years of the child’s life. In contrast, I believe that the complex is an aspect of bonding and occurs within the period of 7-15 months of life, much earlier than Freud thought [4].

The ego has to be created, but not from nothing. The infant has a subconscious mind, and this subconsciousness is the primary material out of which the ego is made. Relationships are secondary material.

If the ego came ready-made at birth then it would have to be derived from essence or human nature; the ready-made ego would prove the reality of essence. If essence existed then the wounded, traumatised ego could fall back on it as a means of coping with infancy difficulties. An essence would allow the ego to discount the effects of poor relationships. However, psycho-dynamic psychology reveals that poor relationships in childhood have a marked impact on the character of the person even when he has become an adult. The effects of poor relationships in childhood may influence a person for the rest of his life. Hence psycho-dynamic psychology does not support the idea of a basic human nature. The fledgling ego has to create itself by its own efforts, aided only by its subconscious mind and not by any inbuilt essence.

Infancy is a dialogue between the parents’ method of childcare and the influence of the subconscious factors of personality that the infant brings with it from its previous lives into the new incarnation.

Factors of Vulnerability

Growing up has its dangers. The main hurdle to overcome is that of childhood. Trauma in childhood creates a vulnerable child, which grows up to be a vulnerable adult. This means that such a child will have difficulty handling the level of stress that it is exposed to. I split the theme of vulnerability into two factors. One factor centres on the objective difficulties of the child, and the other factor centres on its subjective difficulties. The objective factor is that of fragility and the subjective factor is that of sensitivity.

The inter-relation of these factors is likely to follow a particular pattern. First an event happens to the child and causes some degree of fragility. This is followed by the child’s subjective interpretation of that event, thus increasing its sensitivity to similar events. Even when similar events happen to various children, the effects will vary between the children because the subjective interpretations will vary.

This is the objective factor and centres on issues of empowerment and dis-empowerment. The dominant mood of this state of mind is self-pity. Self-pity weakens the person’s will power.

Fragility is produced in some aspect of consciousness when the person’s will power becomes deflated in that aspect. For example, suppose that a child has a severe mother. His difficulties in his relationship with the mother means that when he has become an adult he is likely to lack strength of will power in any relationships with women. His will power may be fine outside of such relationships, but within them he is fragile to some extent (depending on how mild or severe his childhood difficulties were).

It is not uncommon for people to become frail in their old age. The general reason for this is the same as for the child: reality overwhelms, in some way, the child and the adult, generating a long-term mood of self-pity, thus creating a fragile ego.

A typical psychological disorder that issues from long-term self-pity is depression, particularly the form that is called “endogenous” depression. The term “endogenous” simply indicates that doctors and psychologists can find no apparent cause for the depression.

Excessive sensitivity is the subjective factor of vulnerability and centres on issues of security and insecurity. The dominant mood in this state of mind is fear. Fear inhibits the person’s will power.

Sensitivity to any issue is always increased by constantly focusing on that issue, whether the issue is a positive one or a negative one. Although fear is not likely to be present when concentrating on positive issues, the person owes his overall level of sensitivity to his negative issues. Therefore, the experience of excessive sensitivity to negative issues in childhood can lead to the ability to have excessive sensitivity to positive issues later in life. This is one of the reasons why the ability to be a great artist or thinker often results from a legacy of difficulties in childhood.

The Intensity of Life

The intensity with which infancy trauma is experienced helps to determine the future intensity of the person’s life. Trauma may vary from mild to severe. If trauma has been severe, then the effects of confusion and determinism on the child will be intense. The more powerful that these effects are, so the more difficult will it be for the child to achieve power and happiness in skilful, socially-harmonious, ways. Once it becomes an adult, it may either succumb to these effects or else be propelled into a search for intensity in life. One’s life may well oscillate between being apathetic or being intense.

Where infancy trauma is of minor intensity, or has not occurred, then the person can follow a socially-acceptable way of life that is comparatively pleasant and happy. However, there is not likely to be much intensity in his life.

But when the trauma is intense enough, it will produce a lasting effect of clouding the mind (or just clouding ethical attitudes). Common ways of handling intensity are to undergo a search for meaning in life or to engage in dangerous activities and sports.

[Even if trauma has not occurred in this lifetime, in this incarnation, it will certainly have occurred in some previous ones, and so can be an influence on the child’s emerging ego in its current incarnation.]

[²]. Fear and self-pity are emotions. I have three articles on Emotion on the Home page. [2]

[³]. Gross, Richard. Psychology, the Science of Mind and Behaviour, Hodder & Stoughton, third edition, 1996. [3]

[4]. I have three articles on Bonding, beginning with Overview of Bonding, in the book Living in Times of Change. [4]

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Ian Heath
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.	The Universality of Violence If we look at humanity around the world and throughout recorded history, there seems to be many things that are common to a lot of societies and many things that are different. These patterns of similarity and difference can be ascribed to cultural and historical differences. Putting aside these patterns, is there anything about humanity that is universal? Is there a basic human nature, a basic human essence? I don’t think so. There are only two factors of life that are in fact universal. These two factors are those of violence and the peculiar conditions of childhood. The factors are related to each other, with the first usually being dependent on the second. Violence is independent of cultural and historical differences between societies – such differences only change the forms that violence takes. So where does the universality of violence come from? We need to look at the problems that face the new-born infant. I put my views within a framework of thought that includes a scenario of reincarnation theory [¹]. Understanding the many forms of limitations and creativity and sensitivity in children cannot be explained except by invoking ideas of reincarnation.
Sub - Headings
The Period of Ego Creation
Vulnerability of the Ego
Factors of Vulnerability
The Intensity of Life
References