Die Entdeckung des Ich

Abstract

The discovery of the ‘I’. What is the step in the consciousness of a child that leads to, at the age of two to three years, acknowledging the ‘I’ for the first time? The author will elaborate on this question, based on the theory that in saying ‘I’, the child has become aware of itself as a unified organism. Having discovered its uniform self, the child develops an awareness of its own being, a „Theory of Organism“. This perspective shines a broader, more comprehensive light on the „Theory of Mind“, which children develop at this age, according to recent developmental psychology. From this phenomenological angle of developmental psychology, the author derives a notion of the ‘I’ for the person-centered theory that diverges from the general self-concept—
it is at this level of ‘I’, representing the actual organism, that persons no longer speak about themselves but from within themselves. The resulting challenge for therapeutic practice is to offer a nonobjectifying space for each client’s full expression—another important topic in this article.