In “The Unknown Self” George Frankl outlines the phases of pre-verbal life which contribute to our adult personality. The first phase concerns the relationship between the child’s lips and the mother’s breast. The second phase relates to a refocus of interest into the skin or periphery.
Frankl writes, “The child will be able to have a good feeling of itself and of its own body if it experiences the mother’s embrace, her affectionate touch and her attention”.
The extension of sensitivity from the lips to the entire periphery is the point at which the child begins to experience itself as a distinct entity. It also starts to develop a sense that other bodies exist independently of it – an awareness of externality.
» Read more: The Emergence Of Ego
