Understanding the Self

B . Self during Infancy At birth we are not aware of our unique existence. Does that surprise you? This means that the infant does not realise that she/he is separate and distinct from the world outside – she/he has no self-awareness or self-understanding or self-recognition .

By each of these terms we mean the mental representation (a mental picture) of the self. The infant brings her/his hand in front of her/his face and looks at it but does not ‘realise’ that the hand belongs to her/him and that she/he is separate from other people and things she/he sees around her. The sense of self emerges gradually during infancy and self-image recognition happens around months of age. One interesting experiment which has been carried out with infants in the age range - months is described below.

You can try it out too. Put a dot of red lipstick/colour on the cheek of the infant and then place the infant in front of the mirror. If the infant has an awareness of the self, she/he will touch her own cheek after looking at the red spot on the face in the mirror. If the infant does not have self-awareness, she/he will touch the reflection in the mirror, or just play with the reflection in the mirror as if it is another infant.