The Lens
In this initial onset of life it’s a known natural phenomenon for the
child to be incapable of determining things e.g. specific words to utter
in communicating and to use in describing and labeling things around,
but what’s certain in this phase is the capability of feelings for it’s
the emotion that fuels their existence which then is indicated by crying
regardless of the levels and dimensions of feelings.
Klein (2016) saw human infants as constantly engaging in a basic
conflict between the life instinct and the death instinct. As the ego
traverses integration, preference to gratifying sensations over
frustrating ones becomes natural to the infant. In their attempts to
deal with this dichotomy of good and bad feelings, infants organize
their experiences into positions or ways of dealing with both internal
and external objects. Furthermore, as to survive is innate and no less
critical on the child, expressing a certain kind of ‘demand’ in
which the child feels necessary for survival takes place. This specific
demand can be described as the need for a scaffold or support,
protection, and security that whatever may happen someone is there
however it must be noted that the degree and levels for which it must be
granted are relative as they say ’one child is different from
another’ . Now regardless, when this ’certain kind of demand’ is
not being met, it would unconsciously engrave a feeling of being
betrayed which then influences the thoughts and behaviors which all
constitute the emergence of mistrust. The child grows to have trust
issues within the self and with people that would be commonly translated
to fears, insecurities, hatred, and feeling unseen.
The social and cultural conditions especially childhood experiences are
largely responsible for shaping personality. People who don’t have their
needs for love and affection satisfied during childhood develop basic
hostility toward their parents and as a consequence, suffer from basic
anxiety. Horney (2013) theorized that people combat basic anxiety by
adopting one of the three fundamental styles of relating to others:
moving toward people, moving against people, or moving away from people.
Normal individuals may use any of those modes of concerning people, but
neurotics are compelled to rigidly believe just one. The ‘basic
intrapsychic conflict’ that emerges from compulsive behavior transcends
either an idealized self-image or self-hatred. This idealized self-image
is being expressed as a neurosis. Self-hatred, on the other hand, is
termed and described as alienation from self.
The comprehension of the informants’ self-concept in the context of the
Eriksonian psychosocial development theory anecdotes and contends the
cutting edge of these important tenets: First, self-concept development
takes place according to the ‘epigenetic principle’ i.e. one part
arises out of another and has its own time of ascendency that does not
entirely replace earlier components; second, in every stage of life
there is an interplay of the dichotomy- conflicting interaction between
the harmonious element and the disruptive element, syntonic and dystonic
respectively. For instance, as vividly expressed in this paper, during
infancy basic trust (syntonic) is opposed to basic mistrust(dystonic) . Both, however, are necessary for proper adaptation,
whereas an infant who learns only to mistrust becomes overly suspicious
and cynical; and third, at each stage, the conflict between the dystonic
and syntonic elements although may produce an ego strength, noticeably
on the testimonies of the informants when such is left too little i.e. a
child who doesn’t acquire sufficiency of its demand e.g. trust will
develop the antithesis or the opposite of hope (Erikson, 1993).