The Structuring and Development of the Child 

Basic structuring

We divide our basic psychic functions into a hierarchy of core functions and surface functions fed by the core functions. And as we have said, the core functions evolve with time: they integrate and become substrate functions once their task and the construction they have left is complete. They keep on feeding the whole psychic system. From archaic therapy evidence, we have chosen as core functions:

Essential imprints

The first 3 root adventures which are self-extraction at birth, then bonding and symbiosis, being held, carried and automatically satisfied, then separation with the loss of dependence and omnipotence, literally structures the infant's psyche within about 2 years (initialises the major essential programs, i.e. the backbone psychic functions), two third of which is initiated right at birth in a few minutes, at most a few hours, and consolidated during the first 9 months. The third being implemented during the second half of the symbiotic period and completed before the end of the third year.

Structuring is very rapid: the three essential programs founding the development of the root psychic life are initiated by emotional impacts right at birth within minutes. The first (vitality) is got forever or not. The second (bonding) is also conditional. It initiates or not the vital symbiosis which develops for months and subsides around the end of the second year and during the third year. The third (separation) is signalled at birth and develops after the end of the complete symbiosis until the end of the third year.

The child's psyche will continue growing up to 5-7 years only if the early phases are successful, otherwise the child is deficient in basic functions and invests all forces in a survival process at the detriment of development.

In the latter occurrence, he or she will remain frail and terrorised, waiting for the initials impacts to come, in fact waiting for birth and/or for a symbiotic mother, or, later, waiting for a"father" to take him or her out of the torturing excess symbiosis if that is the case. whatever the later intentions of the parents, good or bad.

The 4th imprint occurs around 7 and claims for the independence (freedom) and learning how to use the environment without any submission to the others. It is a non-conditionability impact produced by the local group. The 5th phase has to occur during the critical period of 14-17 years at adolescence, where the genital and collective functions must be integrated, or else the individual will live all his life along child motivations lines.

The first and second imprints (vitalizing and bonding) have been put into light, studied and assessed mainly by neo-Reichian bodyworkers and therapists of the archaic who have an extensive data on the testimonies of re-living ones own birth and early attachment period. It should be noted that this archaic episode is only body-recorded (as is the whole preverbal period) and is retrieved only by body reactivation methods.

The third imprint (separation) usually has ramification signals in the speech and its features may be surmised by verbal procedures although the very strong reactions it carries are discouraged in most consulting rooms. Since recorded in body memory they are relived and liberated only through group therapy associated with body techniques.

Psychoanalysts of the structural school use in general a 2 step model, that of 1-bonding and symbiosis and 2-fathers impact for the termination of symbiosis. Lack or flaw of only one of those complexes are shown to lead to severe disorders (latent or manifest autism and/or psychosis) and may have lethal issues.

The fourth and fifth imprints have been extensively studied by ethnologists and anthropologists in various societies and people. The independence of the child needed around the 7th year is a guarantee of his later strength and resistance to all means of enforcement, and is a necessary and safe condition for the next step, the passage transformation which is as essential to the maturing of the adult life as to the psychological balance of the community. The absence of those two transformations produces fearful, submissive, irresponsible and unreliable pseudo-adults, as well as erring and frailty of the group with unseemly collective behaviour.

Therefore, to be congruent, we now in structural psychology use a 5 imprints model. Here are in table form a display of the 5 essential imprints which initiate the major macrofunctions we shall describe under. They are all of IRM type, i.e. need a trigger impact to produce transformation and onset of a new program.

Originary imprints

The most vital imprints are those of the early period without which the remaining ones cannot open up. They will be described in the next pages. Here is a summary.

The vitality complex

- life appears in the body during labour; the child suddenly passes from a passive state to an automatically active state;

- this state persists for life if no early shock happens; it triggers a frenzy oriented towards self-propulsion and expulsion, pedalling for pushing, rotating in right position, orienting head, arching neck;

- starts breathing autonomously before chord is cut;

- then just after delivery, breathing, and crawling to the heart and breast; 

The bonding and symbiosis complex

neonate

- necessity of immediate body contact and maternal warmth, of being held in the breast-and-arms of the mother; seeking heartbeat, warmth and pressure;

- crawling for the breast, reaching with hands, rooting reflex appears, sucking;

- necessity for an unquestioned positive interest and fulfilling of needs;

- creation of an absolute bond, a necessary symbiosis until autonomy is reached;

mother

- transformed by the emotional contact with the baby into a symbiotic mother;

- urge to take the baby up from her legs to her breast; shock at birth creating automatic unquestioned total gift of her body for the child's needs;

feeding and holding

- need for close body contact at all times for safety (external womb), thus allowing confidence and strength to build up;

- creating relationship and reciprocity; slowly decreasing during the symbiosis period until autonomy is reached.

The separation complex

- slowly reaching out from the safety of the symbiosis;

- acquiring the capacity to deal with the absence of the mother through the dual device of the object (an internal substitute for the other) and the emotional function (a binary interaction release mechanism) to manage relationships;

- the building up of a self identity through a process of a primary identification with the mother and secondary dissolution of that identification under the influence of the father, the local group, and coping with strangers 

Severe disorders

In the originary range (survival essential mechanisms), defective imprinting is invariably lived as lethal attacks of ones psychological life and integrity from the environment and is the root of all severe disorders: autism, psychosis, paranoia, and psychopathology. Although distortion of surface or tardy constructions (primary and secondary registers) produces neurosis, damage done to the instinctual and survival mechanisms which are essential to the instigation of the whole psychic construction (originary register) produces the whole spectrum of psychoses.

Abuse may be viewed socially as a set of aggressive behaviours done on the child when already of kindergarten age, but one often forgets that

• abuse is also non congruent behaviour or state of being towards the foetus or neonate (usually dismissed under the assumption that the neonate does not feel anything), and that
• abuse is also disturbing any one of the steps of the psychological construction which takes place during childbirth (usually dismissed under the cover of biotechnological safety), and that
• passive abuse is also not meeting the child's essential instinctual programs with the proper imprints necessary for its survival and core construction (usually dismissed under the pretence that only conditioning, education, and intelligence stimulating influence the child).

When discussing heavy disorders, we have only to refer to the archaic life, since more advanced and tardy functions cannot build up when more elementary functions have not been initialised and developed. Therefore, when studying severe disorders, we need only consider the first 3 imprints numbered 1 to 3, and use the 3 archaic essential imprints model:

1-the mother imprint of the vitality complex

2-the mother imprint of the bonding-symbiosis complex

3-the father imprint of the separation complex

The details of that early construction will be given in the next pages. We now turn to outline the tardy constructions, which are less important for the core of the psyche and which distortion lead to minor disturbances. 

Primary imprints

The primary register is more readily accessible to investigation. Provided the emotional function is constructed and the imaginary function is developed and linked to the reactive body system (inner elementary psychic mechanisms), which is the case when the symbiosis has been correctly lived and latent psychosis is absent, the events of the primary register produce reflections in dreams, talk and attitudes (only reflections, the elementary units being all body events). Therefore, verbal techniques allow some inference about the events of this register (to the exclusion of the events of the archaic originary register not accessible by thoughts or language) even if the release of those events is of the resort of body-psychotherapy. This is why psychoanalysis and psychotherapy textbooks exemplify the majority of the patterns of this register as surmised from talk and observation analysis.

The most important imprints of this stage concern the development of various functionalities: early narcissism, image of self, play and as a way to learn, autonomy of experiencing owing to emotional safety, body sensitivity, emotional procedures and object relation for managing dual relationships, ability to withstand frustration, elaboration of projects and future gratification through imagination, integration of limits to gratification, of the difference of generations, of relationships with strangers. Pleasure is the main drive of this register and the motive of discovery and self-learning.

We may state here some important constructions of this register:

• body integration: contact, sensations and excitement as a motor for survival and development process; sensitivity and reactivity as a safe device for managing relations; pleasure and play as a guide for learning; identity of self and body as an integrated whole;
• emotional events: learn to trust the release schemes as a way of diminishing tensions, and use of mothers words (mostly) to give meaning to what happened in relational terms;
• identity (subjectivity): emergence of an I, a function of differentiation from the state of "merged with the mother" to the feeling of individuality and uniqueness;
• outer womb: safe ground close to the mother protected from excessive stimulation for experiencing, venturing and coming back to safety (mothers body and extension);
• early narcissism and image of self: integration of the mothers concepts and image of her child (unconscious feelings and thoughts) as own image (mirror stage);
• imagination, future management, frustration management, and project forming: early imaging and figuring as a help to manage difficult situations, especially situations of wanting and frustration when the mother goes out of the symbiosis; learning elementary projection into the future for task handling;
• symbolic life: origination of symbolic life through consistent correspondence between words and acts (integrity of the psyche), beginning of "meaning";
• limits to omnipotence: when the outer world (through the father figure, the genital need of the mother, and her needs for social gratification) puts limits to the all-powerfulness of the mother, the child at the same time integrates limits to his own power over the mother, and by extension limits to his power on the world (father imprint);
• strangeness resolved: when the relationship with the mother brings differentiation, the real father comes into existence as a foreigner the child can trust (the other voice), a prototype of all strangers to be met later.

Primary memories register as figures (concepts and early symbolism) and emotions normally attached together in clusters of experiences. In the primary range, faulty imprints and excessive frustration may add on to an already troubled originary substrate. If all originary essential imprints are OK, disturbance in the primary range leads mostly to troublesome recorded events, contents or neurosis.

Secondary imprints

The secondary register is one of elaboration on raw facts, complementary of the primary at first and replacing progressively emotional responses by more subtle relational responses. The procedures and functions of various types of intelligence and mental processes which are used for planning and problem solving develop. Emotional functions evolve into a system of sentiments of increased spectrum and subtlety, as the necessity for release subsides. There are many textbooks on this subject and we do not consider adding to them. Here are the global functions which will develop provided the context allows it.

project: use of imaginary functions and symbols for estimation of a future event and problem solving; it is to be noted that this function is put to the service of the powerful unconscious drives; therefore, our actions converge towards an unconscious goal motivated by the needs of our emotional life and the necessity of freeing the past recorded events, and not by reason as was thought during the last century by modern thinkers;

modelling: use of the symbolic function to build up an inner model of the world, causal and acausal relations;

sentiment: development of a system of getting information on the relations with other humans (and also animals and plants) without the necessity for the physical release of emotional tensions;

freedom: a specific ritualised procedure is used to prevent children from being conditioned and give them freedom for the rest of their lives.[1]

It may be said here that the more advanced programs can develop only provided that the former imprints have been correctly introduced. Otherwise, the psychic system is still busy with older problems and not available for new programs.

Passage transformation

The passage complex concerns in fact all, originary, primary, and secondary levels. It is a collective event generating by sudden collapse, the "death" of the child's system of motivations and the immediate integration of an adults psychic system of sentiments associated with new drives.

 It means losing the child's drives of

• need,
• power, impatience and will,
• pleasure, play,
• search for comfort and mild things,
• search for excitement and easy sex,

facing the bondage of adulthood, and integrating the system of sentiments shared by the group, including

• sex and parenting, absolute respect for the children;
• sentiment of tasks and duties towards the group, consciousness of the collective (ethnic) needs;
• self-assertion, independence, freedom of choice and of response, responsibility;
• consciousness of self history and the chains of consequences of ones life;
• acknowledgement of the complexity and mystery of the world;
• reverence for nature and service to the"greater than I".

 The main drives of the adult are: the need for orgasm, the need for needed by the local group, and the need for self-actualisation, all of these requiring the extinction of the child's needs to commence.

This transformation produces trust in sex and marital relationship, sentiment of the importance of the child and of the transmission to the next generation, respect and protection of nature and natural processes, and a dissolution of the infantile fears.

Transformation has to be consistent with the earlier rearing of children up to adolescence. It is possible only if correct originary, primary and secondary imprinting have prepared the ground for that transformation. Even then, this adventure is difficult and challenging. In principle, it is possible only in the window of 14 to 17 years but it seems that tardy transformation have been used in many cases owing to difficulties of preparing the ritual. Ritual is needed to facilitate the process, alleviate fears, and allow for the full impact of the local group to act for the transformation.

[1] this ritual is described in some ethnology studies; also in Storm, Hyemeyhosts, Song of Heyoehkah, Ballantine, New York, NY, USA, 1983, pp. 247-252.

See also an older text: Structuralization and Development

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