Structuring and Development

The child structures itself in the triangular relationship with the parents. Motivations are built-in but specific imprints are needed which will fit a key (impact) into a heretofore vacant input line in a program in standby mode (waiting for a key input); the program will run using this input ever afterwards. The levels at which the imprints act are:

• biological: built-in physical and physiological survival and growth motivations
• ethological: built-in animal-like instincts: safety, food-seeking, reproduction, parentage
• originary: built-in archaic functions concerning psychological survival and growth
• primary: functions of the relationship with the mother and father, the body and the self-image
• secondary: functions of the relationship with the mother and father and social learning
• tertiary: transformation and initialisation of the functions of the adult
  

Ethological cycles and originary cycles are similar in kind, but may be distinguished as instincts common to animals, especially mammals and primates, and instincts specific to humans which do not exist in animals. Getting a self-image recognisable in a mirror is one instance of a primary function. The imprints are necessary, they are waited for and actively sought by cycles (programs) which initiate from inner or outer motives. Some cycles require an imprint to initiate without which they do not run, some cycles will always take in any imprint, faulty or sound, and some cycles will run without imprints, but will record automatically what is available. 

Originary imprints

Ethological cycles

Ethology is the study of animal life in its natural environment. Extended to human life, we find that the patterns of the upper species, especially mammals, are present in the human, however with variations, and with the addition of the passage complex. This follows from self-observation in therapies but also from the principle of equivalence of human ontogenesis with species philogenesis. We have the following major steps:

• birth reflexes complex: frenzy for self-propulsion: pedalling for pushing, rotation in right position, orienting head, arching neck; breathing, crawling
• bonding complex:
  • neonate: necessity of immediate body contact and maternal warmth, of being cradled in the breast-and-arms of the mother;
  • crawling for the breast, rooting reflex, sucking, reaching with hands;
  • necessity for an unquestioned positive interest; creation of an absolute bond, a necessary symbiosis until autonomy is reached;
  • 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 carrying complex: need for close body contact at all times (waking or asleep) for safety, allowing the building up of strength; creating relationship and reciprocity; slowly decreasing during the symbiosis period until autonomy is reached
• autonomy complex: separation from the safety of the symbiosis; taking steps toward capacity to manage the absence of the mother, the identity difference with the other, and relationships with strangers
  

In the ethological range faulty imprinting is invariably lived as lethal attacks to the child's psychological and/or biological life from the part of the environment, and is the background of autism and psychosis. Pathogenic situations are signalled by the child through: 1–crying: signal for dramatic lack of something vital; 2–vomiting, digestive troubles, feeding refusal, illness, convulsions, lack of sleep, loss of respiration, withdrawal, loss of sensitivity, loss of vitality; 3–chosen death from the lack of the necessary safety due to faulty delivery and absence of bonding.

There are also ethological complexes in adult life: mating and sexual intercourse is one belonging to the species, parenting is another.

Originary register

Imprints of the originary register may not be widely different from those on the ethological level. This level is instinctual and the programs are all vital to psychological and biological life. However, they will convey meaning for the child and significance for the society. The ethological imprints may be classified in the originary range. One may also add to them the following systems of sentiments impregnated by the parents and the society as the parents bear it.

• individuality imprint:
  • wish of the child to be: perception by the child that he or she is wanted by the parents as an entirely new independent individual, only temporary dependent on the parents;
  • naming of the child: stating its individuality and difference (identity, sense of self, and subjectivation)
• origin imprint: evidence of the father-mother (sexual) origin of life
• shaping and strength giving imprint: wish of the parents that the child gains qualities in life such as safety, strength, belongingness, care, love, etc. which can be developed only through the parenting function
• double external uterus complex: provision by the mother for a safe ground for experiencing at all times, and for a nourishing and positive unquestioned regard and gift; provision by the father for a safe context for the mother for her to nurture the child, and for a positive unquestioned regard for the mother

Are thus initiated and integrated at this level a number of schemes for later life:

1. the body imprint of the frenzy at birth for self propulsion (autonomous survival potency);
2. the body imprint of the birth canal stimulation (sexual arousal potency);
3. imprint of the mother's body fighting for release at birth (transmission of impulse and life force potency);
4. imprint of the mother's body after birth (safety from contact, body-feeling safety, and sexual safety);
5. imprint of the self-service feeding (potency of getting autonomously what is needed) and imprint of being carried (safety, safe dependency, autonomy and power, self-reliance and -assurance, and early relational reciprocity)

In the originary range, faulty and/or absence of vital imprints are either lived as lethal attacks to the foetus, neonate or infant, or as dramatic want of vital and essential stimulation. Want or error of one or more of these imprints usually leads to one form or the other of latent autism/psychosis:

• alienation to the mother;
• self-ablation of one or more of essential functions, and in particular of vitality;
• isolation from the world stimulation;
• psychological death, early delirium (acting 'delirium');
• blockage of the incipient figuring function and later, of thinking;
• death (suicide).

Note that originary memories are body-records in the form of tensions and reactions to the environment (called 'the pictogram' by Piera Aulagnier) and show only by re-living the early scenes. 

Primary imprints

The primary register is more readily accessible to investigation, since, when the emotional function and imaginary function are operating and linked, some material of this register reflects in dreams and talk during analysis. Thus, textbooks of psychoanalysis exemplify most of the patterns of this register.

The most important imprints of this stage concern the development of functions: early narcissism, image of self, play as a way to learn, autonomy of experiencing due to emotional safety, body sensitivity, emotional procedures for managing relationships, managing of frustration and projects through imagination, integration of limits to gratification and of the difference of generations, integration of relation with strangers.

We may state here:

• body integration: contact, sensations and excitement as a motor for survival and development; sensitivity and reactivity as a safe device for managing relations; pleasure as a guide for learning; identify of self and body
• emotional procedures: learn to trust the release schemes as a way of appeasement, then use mother's words to give meaning to what happened
• subjectivation: emergence of an I, a function of differentiation from the state of 'merged with mother' to the feeling of individuality
• outer womb: safe ground close to the mother protected from excessive stimulations for experiencing, venturing and coming back to safety (mother's body)
• early narcissism and image of self: integration of the mother's concepts and image on her child as own image (unconscious feelings and thoughts)(mirror stage)
• imagination, future, frustration and project: early imaging and figuration as a help to manage difficult situations, especially situations of wanting and frustration when the mother steps out of the symbiosis; learning elementary projection into the future
• symbolic life: origination of symbolic life through coherent correspondence between words and acts (wholeness)
• limits to omnipotence: when the outer world (through the father figure and desire for him in the mother) puts limits to the omnipotence of the mother, the child at the same time integrates limits to his own potency on the mother, and by extension 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 other voice) the child can trust, a prototype of all strangers to be met later

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

Secondary imprints

In the secondary register, the procedures and functions of various types of intelligence and mental process develop which are used for planning and problem solving. On the other hand emotional functions evolve into a system of sentiments of increased spectrum and subtlety, as the necessity for release subsides.

There are so many texts on this subject that 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
• modelling: use of the symbolic function to build up an inner model of the world
• 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 [see Freedom ritual ->]

It may be said here that the more advanced imprints are likely to register only insofar that the former imprints have been correctly introduced so that the corresponding program open at the right time. Otherwise, the psychic system may be still busy with older problems and not available for new programs.

Passage transformation or tertiary imprints

The passage complex concerns in fact all, originary, primary, and secondary levels. It is a collective event entraining by sudden collapse, the 'death' of the child's system of motivations and functions and the immediate integration of an adult's psychic system of sentiments and motivations.

It means losing the child's motives of

need,

power, impatience and will,

pleasure, play,

search for comfort,

search for excitement and easy sex,

facing the bondage of adulthood, and integrating the system of meanings shared by the group. Including

sex and parenting, absolute respect of the children,

sentiment of being needed, tasks and duties towards the group, consciousness of the collective (ethnic) needs,

self-assertion, freedom of choice and of response, responsibility,

consciousness of self history and the chains of consequences of one's life,

acknowledgement of the complexity and mystery of the world,

reverence for nature and service to the 'greater than I'.

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 congruent with the earlier raising of the children to adolescence. It is possible only if correct originary, primary and secondary imprints have prepared the ground for easy transformation. Even then, this adventure is difficult and challenging. In principle, it is possible only in the window 14-17 years but it seems that tardive transformation have been used by tribes owing to modern difficulties of preparing the ritual. 

ESSENTIAL IMPRINTS

The early adventures (wish of the parents, frenzy and self-extraction at birth, bonding-symbiosis-carrying, separation, emotionalisation, loss of omnipotence) literally structures the infant's psyche within about 24 months (initialises the major essential programs, i.e. the backbone psychic functions). Natural developing continues during the 5-7 years only if the early phases are successful, otherwise, the child is broken and crippled, and already using all his potential in a survival process. He/she will be frail and terrorised whatever the later intentions of the parents. The 5th major phase of transformation has to occur during the critical period of 14-17 years, or the individual will live all his life along child motivation lines.

Of the most important imprints acknowledged at this moment by psychoanalysts, bonding-symbiosis and father's sexual impact are the foremost (which amounts to symbiosis and its dissolution). Lack or fault of only one of those leads to severe pathology (latent or manifest autism and/or psychosis) and may have lethal issues. Already many structuralists use this 2 imprints model. Ethnologists and anthropologists accord that the passage transformation is also essential to the adult and to the psychological balance of the community. Lack of that transformation produces unreliable pseudo-adults, erring and frailty of the group. So we advocate the use of this 3 imprints model as a minimum for discussing psychology.

However, to be complete, and very determinant in structural therapies, we prefer to add the ethological imprints of vitality, without which the other programs are not fed, and autonomy of breathing without which the emotional system will not set on or function poorly. Also important is the non-conditionability imprint gained around seven and is essential for successful adulthood.

We now, for practical purposes, use the following 5 major imprints model, initializing the 5 major macrofunctions of life. Those of IRM type (trigger imprint) are highlighted and numbered.

Severe disorders

When discussing severe disorders, we may refer only to the archaic life, since more advanced functions cannot build up when more elementary functions have not been initialized and developed. Therefore, for severe disorders, we may restrict the root of the problems within the first 3 imprints range, using the 3 archaic imprints model:

1-the vitalization imprint and the vitality-autonomous breathing complex

2-the bonding-symbiosis imprint and the feeding and holding complex

3-the separation imprint and the autonomy-independence complex

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