Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry

Self-Identity and Religion/Spirituality 161The affective attunement is present from theemergence of the sense of a core self (in holding,handling, and presenting objects). Infants willinternalize “schemas-of-being-with,” which willserve as a model for future interactions. Thus,the “tickle the tummy” game is learned from themother, but it is recognized when played withother people. In other words, the identity is constructedin the relationship with the mother butis maintained in a prototype recalled by a cue.Identity is not part of the actual goal. By the rangeof affective attunements that she provides, themother will validate or repudiate certain experiences.Together with the creation of the sense of acore self , this initiates differentiation between thesocial self and the disavowed self. The social selfis created by the experiences of the self that areselected and attributed value because they satisfysomebody else’s needs and desires. The disavowedself consists of a conglomerate of disavowed selfexperiencesthat are not easily expressed usinglanguage. During development, the social self willbe perceived as a false self in personal experiencesfurther determined by the “internal conception,”to which being one’s true self will be attributed.This is because the social self satisfies the desiresof others before its own.With the emergence of the sense of a subjectiveself and of the infant’s newly acquired abilityto recognize in others a mental state similar toits own, the domains of privacy and intimacybecome possible. A third domain of the self isestablished, the private self , composed of experiencesone does not share, but that are not disavowed.The emergence of the sense of a verbalself creates a new way of being-with betweenmother and child by resorting to verbal symbolsin sharing meaning. In this sense, languageacquisition is not only regarded as an access toindividuation, but also as a powerful means ofmaintaining union. Indeed, learning languagestrengthens the psychological bond first withrelatives and then with other members of thelanguage’s culture. This developmental visionof early childhood (0–2 years old) conceives ofa forging of the identity within the crucible ofthe relationship. Infants establish themselves byinternalizing types of intersubjective relationships,that is, various forms of “being-with.”They are regarded from the start as differentiatedbeings. Another perspective on the constructionof identity emphasizes the object of the relationship;the person in the relationship rather thanthe manner of relating to him or her. This distinctionmatters from the moment we want tofollow Freud’s reasoning and associate partialidentification with only certain traits of a person,as opposed to a global identification withhim or her.6. THE PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATIONAccording to a Freudian interpretation, identificationis “the act by which an individual becomesidentical to another, or by which two humanbeings become identical” (p. 187).(6) Freud distinguishesthree identification modes: a primaryidentification, a secondary identification, and apartial identification.Primary identification is born in the first relationshipwith the mother. It is the original formof connection to another person, marked fromthe outset by affective ambivalence. Contrary toStern, Freud did not consider infants to be differentiatedfrom the very beginning. Rather, heassumes that as long as both sexual and generationallack of differentiation predominate in thefirst relationship with the mother, the ego and thealter-ego are not clearly differentiated and that,strictly speaking, an object relation cannot beestablished. The difference between Stern’s andFreud’s points of view results from a difference incriteria when talking about differentiation. Fromhis research on babies, Stern was able to highlightan infant’s sense of self that implies the ability todifferentiate between self and others long beforethe other is constructed as a love object differentfrom the self, according to Freud’s criteria.Characterized by primitive orality, the primaryidentification is thus an identification with therelative, the mother figure. It is experienced andsymbolized as a bodily operation: incorporation.Freud believes that, in the same way, duringmourning the lost object is incorporated