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Personal Identity
Also available from Bloomsbury:
Ethics and Politics of the Self, by Daniele Lorenzini

The Evolution of Consciousness, by Paula Droege
The Moral Epistemology of Intuitionism, by Hossein Dabbagh
Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion, edited by Robert Vinten
Personal Identity
A Philosophical Perspective
Massimo Marraffa and

Cristina Meini
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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To Enrico Roberto, Giulio and Lucrezia
Contents
Preface viii
1 Setting the philosophical stage 1

2 The psychological toolkit 13
3 From bodily awareness to bodily self-awareness 31
4 The origins of affective self-awareness and self-regulation 51
5 Naïve psychology 91
6 Expanding introspective space 119
7 Construction and defence of narrative identity 149
A brief overview 179

Notes 181
References 193
Index 223
Preface
Those who today, especially if they are psychologists, deal with the subject of
personal identity, almost always build on what one of the founders of modern
psychology, William James, wrote in 1890. For their part, philosophers who
deal with this subject have as their historical referent one of the great English
empiricists, John Locke. If we read these thinkers, we find that both of them
offer us very clear pages that are extremely useful in clarifying our ideas about
the current debate on personal identity.
Locke proposed a theory of person and personal identity in Of Identity
and Diversity, Chapter XXVII of Book II of An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. The chapter was added to the second edition of the text, in 1694,
on the advice of his friend William Molyneux. Such theory grounds the history
of the concept of identity itself and provides its first modern definition.
According to Locke, the self is not determined by the identity of substance,
but only by the identity of consciousness. Against substantialism, he relies on
memory – the extension of consciousness to the past – as the most psychological
and less metaphysical notion he can conceive to define the concepts of person and
identity. On closer view, however, Locke’s consciousness is a ‘strong’ stand-in for
the soul; it is still a sort of secularized soul. Despite the philosopher’s intentions,
it is described as a sort of essence; for all that, the Lockean consciousness is still
given a priori. It is not something that is constructed during life, which emerges
from the multifarious qualities of the body and human existence.
Such a non-essentialist notion of consciousness is found instead in James’
Principles of Psychology. His gaze is more analytical and less speculative than
Locke’s, and thus more concrete; it is a gaze turned to everyday life. James is
above all a philosopher, but reading his writings, one perceives how psychology
as an autonomous discipline, separate from philosophy, was emerging in those
very years. Some philosophers, however, had paved the way for a psychology
without the soul: ‘It is to the imperishable glory of Hume and Herbart and their
successors to have taken so much of the meaning of personal identity out of the
clouds and made of the Self an empirical and verifiable thing’ (James 1981, vol.
1, 319).
Preface ix
After James, the issue of personal identity disappears for a long time from the
horizon of psychological research. Indeed, during the first half of the twentieth
century, experimental psychology was almost exclusively concerned with basic
problems concerning the structures of behaviour and perception, and not with
issues of enormously greater complexity such as the identity of a person. As
a result, for decades the issue of personal identity would be addressed with a
sociological slant – even when sociologists who worked on it cross the line to
psychology: think, for example, about the notion of self-presentation developed
by Erving Goffman. And even when a philosopher and sociologist like George
H. Mead uses James’ ideas and terminology, it is to further emphasize the
importance of sociocultural determinants for the definition of individual
identity.
For its part, dynamic psychology, too, was late in approaching this subject. As
Habermas and Kemper note, ‘the concept of identity was initially only implicit in
psychoanalytic theorising, foremost in Freud’s synthetic function of the ego and
Federn’s cohesion of ego feeling’ (2021, 193). The first explicit contribution of
psychoanalysis to the concept of identity was Erik Erikson’s, who introduced the
concept of ego identity (also termed ‘psychosocial identity’) and made several
fundamental remarks concerning the feeling of identity in adolescence, identity
crises and changes in self-image. Other important developments will come from
the revival of the theme of the self within the Neo-Freudian School (with Erich
Fromm, Karen Horney, Harry S. Sullivan); from Heinz Kohut’s theorization, with
the birth of a psychology of Self; and finally, from Otto Kernberg’s integration
of Erikson’s concept of identity with ego psychology and object relations theory.
Today, more than a century away from James’s ground-breaking chapter
The Consciousness of Self, ‘one cannot make much progress through most areas
of human psychology without encountering constructs that invoke the self ’
(Leary and Tangney 2012, vii). In the past sixty years, hundreds of thousands of
scholarly articles and chapters have been published about the self. In this book,
we focus on three factors that contribute to explaining why the topic of identity
has played such a pivotal role in psychology.
The first factor concerns theoretical psychology, and consists of the idea of
an inextricable link between identity self-description and self-consciousness,
which is – we will argue – a fundamental aspect of James’ theory of the self.
There is no self-consciousness without there being some description of self, and
thus without there being some description of identity. The theoretical advantage
of stating that it is our identity that determines our consciousness rather than the
reverse is that the idea of identity is more concrete than that of consciousness:
x Preface
it does not concern a purported entity, or essence, but refers to the perceptible
diversity of individual characteristics.
The second factor pertains to dynamic psychology and developmental
psychology and consists of the fact that the construction of affectional life, in the
course of infancy and, subsequently, throughout one’s entire life, is closely linked
to the construction of an identity that is well-defined and accepted as valid. The
construction of a valid personal identity is inseparable from the construction
and maintenance of self-esteem. In turn, the theme of self-esteem is inextricably
linked to the theme of the solidity of ego (in the Freudian sense), or, if you like,
the theme of the cohesion of self (in Kohut’s sense).
Lastly, a third factor concerns social psychology and consists of the fact that
each of us constantly negotiates the validity of our identity in exchanges with
other people. Erving Goffman’s aforementioned concept of self-presentation
refers to the fact that each of us, without being aware of it, devotes a considerable
amount of our energy to obtaining from others the continuous confirmation of
the validity of our identity.
In the course of the book, we will immerse ourselves in this psychodynamic,
socio-cognitive and developmental literature, to develop an inseparably socio-
constructivist and cognitive-evolutionary perspective on the development of
subjective identity aiming to unfold the potentialities of the Jamesian theory
of personal identity. Within this framework, the self (the pair <I, Me>) will be
defined as a psychobiological unifying process (the process of ‘self-ing’ or ‘I-ing’)
incessantly building and updating self-representations, from bodily to narrative
self-representation. The construction of subjective identity takes the form of an
ongoing and inexhaustible search for a self-description; and the intertwining
of cognitive and affective dimensions characterizing such process results in an
identity that is not given once and for all: it is rather – following a tradition
stretching from John Locke to Ernesto De Martino – something perpetually
rebuilt and actively reconfirmed, something perennially precarious. Such
precariousness makes the theme of self-identity construction inseparable from
that of self-identity defence.
This theoretical and empirical path will lead us to take a stance on some
crucial issues in the debate on personal identity. First, it allows us to distance
ourselves from the non-naturalistic (sometimes anti-naturalistic) trends in the
hermeneutic conception of narrative identity. Second, it enables us to reject the
thesis according to which the socially and historically situated narrative self
would constitute the foundational dimension of human selfhood. The bodily and
autobiographical selves account for two different kinds of unity, corresponding to
Preface xi
different aspects of human selfhood. Lastly, it allows us to claim that the process
of self-representation originating in the dialectics between I and Me is not
epiphenomenal but is rather a ‘causal gravity centre’ in the history of the agent.
This is usually underestimated. Much data from the psychology of development,
dynamic psychology, social psychology and psychology of personality supports
the idea that the entire cycle of life takes shape in compliance with a primary
need to exist solidly as a unitary ego. As a result, the incessant construction
and reconstruction of an acceptable and adaptively functioning identity is
the ongoing construction of a system of defences, the continuously renovated
capacity to curb and cope with anxiety and disorder.
It is not a form of reciprocal courtesy that leads us to state that this is a book that
was conceived together in all its parts and drafted by four hands, continuously
intervening with new ideas and theoretical challenges in each other’s writing.
Nonetheless, for those interested in knowing who was mainly responsible for
drafting the various chapters, we would like to point out that Massimo Marraffa
was mainly responsible for Chapters 1, 3 and 7, and Cristina Meini for Chapters 4,
5 and 6. For Chapter 2, however, the authors are equally guilty.
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Michele Di Francesco and
Alfredo Paternoster with whom, for several years now, we have been working
on the topics addressed in this book. More recent, but fruitful and promising, is
the collaboration with Emiliano Loria and Marco Viola. Thanks are also due to
Chiara Testino for the linguistic revision of some parts of the text.
Rome-Turin, 9 October 2023
1
Setting the philosophical stage
1. Objective and subjective identity
A person’s identity, in ordinary language, is in the first place that set of

characteristics that are stable over time, both somatic (my physiognomy) and
psychological (my personality, the constant style of my behaviour) and social (my
age, marital status, cultural level and income bracket), by which every individual
is well distinguishable compared to others. This is the identity for others or
objective identity: all that characterizes each of us as a single and unmistakable
individual, what prevents persons from mistaking us for someone else.
Just as each one has an identity for others, they also have an identity for
themselves, a subjective identity. This is the set of my characteristics such as I
perceive and I describe them in myself; it is the way an individual perceives
oneself as a person, defines oneself as a person of a certain kind and tracks one’s
own continuous identity as a person through time and space. Every time we
wake up it is as if we were saying ‘I am the same self that I was yesterday’, writes
James (1981, 316), who adds: ‘Each of us when he awakens says, Here’s the same
old self again, just as he says, Here’s the same old bed, the same old room, the
same old world’ (317).
The distinction between the objective and subjective dimensions of the
identification of the person enables us to cope with an insidious feature of
the English-speaking literature about personal identity. Both in philosophical
tradition (from Locke to James), and in the psychodynamic one (from Sullivan
to Jacobson, up to Kohut and modern Kohutians), as well as in sociological
English literature, the theme of identity has been faced not as personal identity,
but rather as the self. This is a non-technical, ordinary expression in the English
language that means, inseparably, both ‘identity’ and ‘the person’. Therefore, ‘the
self ’ displays an objective dimension by denoting the person both in her internal
structure and in her facets of identity for others; but it displays a subjective
2 The Developmental Psychology of Personal Identity
dimension as well, by denoting the person in her concrete self-recognition, just

as this latter is grasped through self-consciousness.
The self in its subjective or experiential dimension is what we find in the
theories the entire philosophical and psychological reflections on identity
continue to refer to, that is, those of John Locke and William James.1
2. Locke’s anti-substantialist concept of personal identity
Locke begins his discussion of personal identity by distinguishing the concept

of person from that of human being. If we consider, he suggests, a dull irrational
man having no more reason than a cat or a parrot (1975, 333), and we compare
him to a hypothetical philosophizing parrot, we realize that the former is a
human being but not a person, while the rational parrot is, perhaps, a sort of
person, but is not a human being.2
Thus, when we normally interact with our fellow human beings and we
consider ourselves, it is not enough for us to know that we are all human beings;
we need to know that we, and usually others too, are something more and
something different: that is, Locke says, that we are persons.
‘Person’, the philosopher writes, is a normative (‘forensic’) term: it does
not designate an essence, but a psychosocial attribute that is assigned to those
subjects who possess a specific set of reflective capacities enabling them to
govern their actions according to self-conscious mentation. The person is the
subject who can form imaginary test scenarios to make a planning evaluation of
what can happen as a consequence of her actions; but above all, she is someone
who can grasp herself not only as a material agent in her present, past and future
acts as public acts but also as an entity who has an ‘interiority’, that is, an inner
virtual space in which thoughts and feelings can be situated as private events.
Only someone with sufficient access to her interiority – to herself as objectified
in the introspective consciousness of the self – can be a morally responsible
agent that is capable of ‘appropriating actions and their merit’.3
In Locke, therefore, individuals are persons only insofar as they can
reflectively appropriate their actions and mentations, by understanding their
meaning; a critical appropriation that originates from ‘that consciousness,
which is inseparable from thinking’ (1975, 335). The identity of a person in time
consists in the sameness of consciousness: ‘as far as this consciousness can be
extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity
of that Person’ (1975, 335).
Setting the Philosophical Stage 3
Thus, diachronic identity is no longer grounded on the old metaphysical and

religious idea of the soul, understood as a unitary and indivisible substratum,
which allows the permanence of our experiences; and is not even based on a
corporeal substance. Rather, it rests on connections established by memory, the
extension of consciousness to the past. Here, we find the idea of personal identity
as a conquest, as work – an idea that is organic to Locke’s political and economic
philosophy (Bodei 2002, 41). Thus, a tradition is ushered in that proceeds with
David Hume and continues to this day with Derek Parfit and Daniel C. Dennett,
where identity is something risky that the individual must gamble with in time
and that does not guarantee a continuous relation to oneself at all.
Personal identity develops over time, like a stream of consciousness whose
continuity is guaranteed (with respect to the past) by memory and (with respect
to the future) by concern, care, worry or planning. Once the substantiality of the
soul has been denied, the stable foundation of the ego, the unity of its streams
of consciousness that should have extended beyond the barriers of death, seems
to be lost:
Separated from the prospect of the eternal, the individual finds himself
progressively immersed in an irredeemable time of frailty. The reduction of
conscious life to transient grains on the Shakespearean ‘bank and shoal of time’,
with the consequent contraction of expectations to purely physical existence,
reveals to us our own intrinsic fragility, our exposure to the ever-present danger
of disintegration and the forgetting of self. (Bodei 2011, 88)
Enormous is therefore the task Locke assigns to memory. In a passage with

baroque tones, he points out the risk of our representations being deleted, as a
sinister anticipation of each one’s physical disappearance:
Thus the Ideas, as well as Children, of our Youth, often die before us: And our
Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where, though
the Brass and Marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the
imagery moulders away. The Pictures drawn in our Minds are laid in fading
Colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear. (1975, 151–2)
According to Locke, personal identity consists of such work of constant

refreshing of all our ideas; if this work ceases,
Ideas in the Mind quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the Understanding,
leaving no more footsteps or remaining Characters of themselves, than Shadows
do flying over Fields of Corn; and the Mind is as void of them, as if they never
had been there. (1975, 151)
The maintenance of personal identity is therefore not spontaneous: it costs

effort, and it arises from the work of refreshing ideas and memories through the
operations of the mind, the faint traces of which are in danger of vanishing like
insubstantial dream images. In such a developmental and temporal conception
of identity, ‘only the commitment to renewal, which each person – implicitly or
explicitly – assumes, consolidates a reconquest of self destined to remain always
incomplete’.
3. A criticism of Kant’s theory of self-consciousness
Three centuries later, and after endless debates on personal identity, Locke’s
uneasiness about the unstable nature of the construction of identity by the human
subject will find its complete formulation in the concept of presence provided
by the philosopher and ethnologist Ernesto De Martino. The questions of the
precarious nature of the subject’s self-construction and the resulting defensive
character of self-consciousness lie at the core of his thought, thus forging a
phenomenological psychology of identity hinged on the concepts of presence
and the complementary crisis of presence.
In his 1948 ethnohistorical study The Magic World, De Martino (2022, 158)
characterizes presence as ‘the person’s unitary being’ or, in Kantian terms, ‘the
transcendental unity of self-consciousness’. There is, however, a fundamental
difference between De Martino and Kant: the unity in question is not in itself
guaranteed insofar as it is not an ahistorical datum, but is, rather, a precarious
acquisition, continuously constructed by culture and constantly exposed to the
risk of crisis, the crisis of presence.
To introduce the issue of the crisis of presence, De Martino examines a large
body of ethnopsychiatric evidence that attests to the widespread presence of
an altered state of consciousness called ‘latah’ by the Malays and ‘olon’ by the
Tungus.4 This state consists of access of echopraxia and echolalia5 which causes
a person to lose the boundaries of her ego:
A latah person, when his attention is attracted by the oscillating movement

of branches shaken by the wind, will imitate this movement passively. Two
latahs surprised by an unexpected noise entered into a state of reciprocal
mimetic automatism in which for about a half hour one continued to imitate
the gestures of the other. (De Martino 2022, 70; English transl. in Guidorizzi
1997, 6)
Based on Shirokogoroff ’s (1935) study of Tungus shamanism, De Martino

analyses the state of olon or latah as a loss of presence:
Everything happens as if a presence that is fragile, non-guaranteed, labile,

unable to withstand the shock caused by particular exciting content, cannot
find enough energy to maintain itself present to such content, encompassing
it, recognizing it and mastering it within a network of definite relationships. In
this way, the content is lost as the content of present consciousness. Presence
tends to remain focused on a certain content, beyond which it cannot go; as a
consequence, it disappears and abdicates as presence. The distinction between
presence and the world that makes itself present crumbles: the subject, instead
of hearing or seeing the rustling of leaves in the wind, becomes the tree that has
rustling leaves; instead of hearing a word, he becomes the word itself, etc. (De
Martino 2022, 72; translation ours)
Most importantly, we find an intensive focus on this kind of experience today in

the debate on the distortions in the subjective experience of one’s self occasioned
by psychedelic drugs (Letheby 2021; Letheby and Gerrans 2017).6 This experience
has been variously called ‘ego-death’, ‘ego-loss’, ‘ego-disintegration’ and ‘ego-
dissolution’; and it has been interpreted from a psychoanalytic perspective as
a disruption of ego-boundaries, which results in ‘a blurring of the distinction
between self-representation and object-representation, and precludes the
synthesis of self-representations into a coherent whole’ (Nour et al. 2016, 2; these
authors quote in this regard Federn 1952; Savage 1955, and Fischman 1983).
Indeed, this characterization is practically indistinguishable from De
Martino’s. The state of olon is an example of the abdication of the synthetic
unity of apperception, which leads to the collapse of the distinction between
presence and world. In this respect, De Martino speaks of an ‘indiscriminate
koinonia’, namely a fusion (and thus mutual annihilation) of presence and world.
Sinking into such a state means losing the ‘function of discrimination’, that is,
the distinction between consciousness and its contents; as a result, presence
devolves into absence, a simple mechanical echo of the surrounding world.
De Martino frames this negative moment from a dialectical perspective. He
follows Kant in arguing that the act of the transcendental synthetic function
grounds the distinction between the subjective unity of the I and the objective
unity of the real – and thus the autonomy of the person. However, whereas Kant
assumes the person’s presence as ‘a uniform historical given’, De Martino argues
that ‘there does not exist any presence, any empirical “being there”, that might
be a datum, an original immediacy beyond all risk and incapable within its own
sphere of any sort of drama and of any development – that is, of a history’ (De
Martino 2022, 159; Engl. transl. in Ginzburg 1991, 45).7
As a result, the principle of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness
is seen as including within itself its opposite in the form of the risk of the
disintegration of the person’s unitary being:
even the supreme principle of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness

involves a supreme risk to the person, that is, the risk of losing the supreme
principle that constitutes and grounds it. This risk arises when the person,
instead of retaining her autonomy in her relationship to the contents, abdicates
the task and allows the contents to assert themselves, outside the synthesis, as
undominated elements, as given facts in an absolute sense. (De Martino 2022,
158–9; translation ours)
In other words, Kant does not consider the process of formation of the person,
or the risks related to this self-making. As a result, the Kantian person is always
given in its unity, as if the psychological level of analysis was always and, in all
cases, guaranteed by the transcendental level. De Martino, in contrast, thinks
that there is no such guarantee, that is, that empirical being there, far from
always being given to itself, is exposed to the risk of not being there and that
consequently, the loss of the original synthetic unity of apperception is a real
existential risk.8
On the other hand, De Martino sees the ethnological and psychopathological
literature on which he draws as showing precisely that the empirical being there
is not given and guaranteed in its being but is rather characterized by structural
lability, which causes it to struggle for its unity and autonomy. As a result, the
self-conscious subject constitutes itself as a repertoire of activities that take pains
to cope with its lack of ontological guarantee, constructing itself on the edge
of its original ‘non-being’, as it were. We have seen it earlierwith dissociative
phenomena in shamanistic societies. But also in assimilating some aspects of
Pierre Janet’s dynamic psychiatry, De Martino built on concepts such as ‘lability
of the mental synthesis’ and ‘psychological misery’ which led to a criticism of the
‘metaphysical hypostasis of the self ’.9
De Martino’s philosophical and anthropological work anticipated the current
centrality of identity in infant research, in social, personality and dynamic
psychology and psychopathology. As we will see, hypotheses and evidence from
such research fields confirm De Martino’s idea of the human subject. The self
as personal identity is a construction with no metaphysical guarantee; it is not
something guaranteed once and for all, but is, rather, a precarious acquisition,
continuously under construction by a human organism and constantly exposed

to the risk of dissolution. This precariousness is the key to grasping the defensive
nature of identity self-construction. The need to construct and protect an
identity that is valid to the greatest extent possible is rooted in the primary need
to subsist subjectively, and thus to exist solidly as a describable ego, as a unitary
subject.
4. The Jamesian I as a process of selfing
In Chapter 10 of Principles of Psychology (1890), James provides the first conscious

psychological formulation of the concept of self that, by drawing on the remarks
made by Locke two centuries earlier, clarifies its experiential-reflective character.
The American philosopher starts by observing that our inner universe appears
to us as a self-referential psychic field; that is, the subject (both the common man
and the ‘spiritualist’ philosopher) is led to suppose that in one’s own experiential
space, there is an innermost centre, which is the starting point of will, ‘the active
element in all consciousness’ (James 1981, 285). James defines ‘this self of all the
other selves’ (James 1981, 285) as ‘pure Ego’ and notes that its previously given
interpretations lie along a spectrum that includes, at one end, the claim that it is
‘a simple active substance, the soul’ (286), which is the metaphysical guarantee of
the presence of the self to the world, and at the other, an eliminativist perspective
claiming that ‘it is nothing but a fiction, the imaginary being denoted by the
pronoun I’ (James 1981).
Then James wonders: what does the pronoun ‘I’ denote? In the sentence ‘I kick
the ball’, ‘I’ designates the agent organism, that is the individual taken as a whole
and as opposed to an external object. Sometimes the ‘I’ is instead something much
more intimate and limited. Indeed, I (as a global agent subject) can also consider
an object that is not entirely external, such as my foot (that is part of my being
but ‘down there’), my hand, or even something else that is more ‘here’ (or ‘less
there’) than my foot – for instance, my eyes or my head, which are almost part of
the intimacy of the ego. In all these cases I keep detaching and differentiating my
subjective ego, as a primary psychic subject, from all these other things, which
are objects for the ego. Thus far, therefore, I am still rather certain of what my
subjective ego is. But then I realize that I am also able to consider as objects things
that are much more ‘inner’: the global image of my body, a sensation, a smell, a
dream, a thought or a mood, such as anxiety or euphoria and also more abstract
realities such as ‘my level of self-esteem’. Then, facing this haemorrhage of my ego,
I wonder: if all these aspects of the mind are objects – insofar as they are objects
of my introspective consciousness – what is the real subject, that is, the wellspring
of consciousness? In other words, how can I capture the conscious subject who
introspects, if any aspect of myself that I introspectively grasp is only an object
of this supposed conscious subject? Ultimately, James states, the innermost ego,
as the centre and driving force of any possible subjectivity, ends up being a pure
grammatical trick, a sort of dimensionless point – or, more unsettlingly, the
‘insubstantial phantom’ evoked by Schopenhauer in a famous passage:
as soon as we try for once to understand ourselves, and to do so by turning

in on ourselves and directing our cognition inwardly, we lose ourselves in a
bottomless void and find ourselves like hollow, transparent spheres from whose
void a voice is speaking, while the cause of it is not to be found within, and in
wanting to grasp ourselves we shudder as we catch nothing but an insubstantial
phantom. (Schopenhauer 2010, 304)
This is, Jervis writes about the Jamesian remarks, ‘the theory of evanescence of
the ego’ (2011, 162). The acting and observing self is an abstract and depthless
subjectivity; ultimately, this subjectivity is a convention; it cannot be located
anywhere. The subject, taken to its limit, does not exist.
Thus far, the Humean pars destruens,10 but James does not stop here. Once the
acting and observing self has melted into an abstract and depthless subjectivity,
the subject regains the feeling of existence in experiencing itself as Me. The Me
is for James the empirical self, that is, the way one presents oneself to oneself,
thus objectifying oneself in the introspective consciousness of oneself. This self-
presentation is a description of identity, which comes in three forms: the physical,
material aspects of the self (material self) associated with the bodily subjectivity;
the subject’s social identity (social self); and lastly ‘a man’s inner or subjective
being’ (James 1981, 283) – the psychological identity grasped in one’s interiority,
that is, in the complexity of everyone’s introspection – which James calls the
‘spiritual self ’ (James 1981, 283).11
Within this framework, the I-self is not a something but ‘is really more like a
verb; it might be called “selfing” or “I-ing”, the fundamental process of making a
self out of experience’ (McAdams 1996, 302). The Me-self is instead ‘the primary
product of the selfing process’; it is ‘the self that selfing makes’ (McAdams 1996,
302). The Me exists as an evolving collection of self-attributions (James’ material,
social and psychological selves) that result from the selfing process. It is ‘the
making of the Me that constitutes what the I fundamentally is’ (McAdams and
Cox 2010, 162).
So construed the Jamesian theory of duplex self presents an aspect that we will
emphasize throughout our book: it allows self-consciousness to be understood
in terms of identity. In contrast to an idealistic view of self-consciousness as a
primary, elemental, simple awareness of the self, preceding any other form of
knowing,12 James views self-consciousness as the knowledge of being there in
a certain way, a self-description, an identity-building. Such a process of selfing
gives rise to different kinds of unity corresponding to the different forms of the
Me.
Thus, there can be no consciousness of self without knowledge of self. One
does not know that one is without knowing who one is; we only know that we are
there insofar as we know that we are there in a certain way, that is, with particular
features, as a describable identity: there is no consciousness of existence without
there being a description of self, and therefore without there being a description
of identity (Jervis 2019, 139).
It is important to note that again this contradicts Kant. As is well known,
Kant agrees with Hume: the empirical apperception ‘can give us no constant or
enduring self in the flow of inner appearances’ (Kant 1998, 232). Yet, Kant thinks
that one may shift from the analysis level of psychological experience to that of
transcendental arguing, and here posits a pure apperception: ‘I am conscious of
myself, not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that I am’, he
writes in the first Critique (B157); and in B158 he adds that ‘[t]he consciousness
of self is [. . .] far from being a knowledge of the self ’ – that is, the consciousness
of existing is distinguished from the consciousness of existing in a certain way.
Thus, Kant’s I think (’that accompanies all my representations’) is something
undetermined and void (‘a something = X’), which, not unlike Descartes’ cogito,
lays a claim to being a primum.
5. Object consciousness versus self-consciousness
The considerations just made require clarification of some notions. To this end,
some historical reminders of the cognitivist revolution may be extremely useful.
In the late 1940s, Edward Tolman’s work indicated the impossibility of
explaining the spatial orientation behaviour of rats in a maze based on the
establishment of a mere association between certain stimuli and certain specific
muscle responses. The experimental animal had to have constructed, within
its nervous system, ‘a functional adaptation’ that operated as a ‘cognitive map’
(Tolman 1948). In the terminology that would later be that of cognitivism, the
rats had constructed complex representational states in their nervous system

that had enabled them to localize reinforcers.
With this construct, Tolman was beating a path of inquiry in tune with
other pioneering attempts to address the problem of how animals perceive
and experience their environment. In the field of ethology, Jakob von Uexküll
argued for the necessity of assuming the presence of a subjective world
(Umwelt) in relatively primitive animals (e.g. in an earthworm or molluscs
such as limpets and scallops) (see Uexküll 2010). The animal lives in a space
that is its world of life; the relationship to this world grounds an elementary
subjectivity so that the object field is a subjective world (the Umwelt for that
matter).
Also in complete consonance with the cognitive maps hypothesis is the text
The Nature of Explanation (1943) by philosopher and psychologist Kenneth
Craik. Here Craik argues that every animal organism develops relatively stable
functional modifications of the nervous system, which are configured as models
of reality.
The theorizing of Tolman, Uexküll and Craik pointed in the same
representationalist direction. Certainly, it was no longer possible to accept the
anthropomorphization of animal subjectivity typical of nineteenth-century
scholars such as Darwin and Romanes; but neither was it possible to assume that
animals were simple stimulus-response machines, as behaviourists proposed.
Animals were now seen as capable of constructing, within their minds/brains,
maps, models or representations of the world environment. In the idiom of the
computational theory of mind, animals are systems whose cognitive states and
processes are constituted by the occurrence, transformation and storage (in the
mind/brain) of information-bearing structures (representations) of one kind
or another. They are conscious precisely insofar as they are capable of taking
in information about their environment, forming internal representations of it
and manipulating these representations to select and execute actions. In what
follows we will assume the soundness of this representational approach to
consciousness.13
This object consciousness is distinct from self-consciousness. In ordinary
linguistic usage, ‘consciousness’ coincides (in most cases) with ‘self-consciousness’
– or at least it is common to think of consciousness as a typically introspective
state. However, one can be conscious of something without being self-conscious
but not vice versa. Most animals are conscious without being self-conscious;
the same is true of infants in the first year. On the other hand, it is impossible to
develop self-consciousness without possessing object consciousness.
The clear distinction between object consciousness and self-consciousness

can be drawn with the help of the theory of intentionality proposed by Franz
Brentano (1874). For Brentano, consciousness is not a primary or essential
quality or character of the mind, all internal to the latter; rather, it is a relation –
which he calls ‘intentionality’ – between a subject and an object. More precisely,
intentionality is ‘the power of minds and mental states to be about, represent, or
stand for, things, properties, and states of affairs. To say of an individual’s mental
states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations
or that they have contents’ (Jacob 2019a).
Object consciousness necessarily goes together with intentionality. The
conscious mind is a set of heterogeneous forms of active relationship (i.e.
construction of representations) between a living organism (the subject) and its
world environment (the object). Any organism endowed with perceptual and
motor systems with a certain degree of complexity, that is, whose behaviour
is mediated by some representational structures (as opposed to purely
‘behaviourist’ organisms), has object consciousness. This is therefore a transitive
form of consciousness: it is always a consciousness of (something).
Against this background, we can speak of an immediate, organismic
subjectivity, consisting of the object consciousness of the infant or animal.
Object consciousness results from the representational activity; this activity
shapes a purely objectual experiential space. As Fonagy et al. (2002) put it, the
child’s mind is at the very beginning of life characterized by the principle of
psychic equivalence, the identification of inner reality with external reality. The
principle can be put as follows: ‘Originally, only the world is given to the subject’
(Lyyra 2009, 76). The principle states that there is no distinction between mind
and world or inner and outer realities in consciousness at the outset. One cannot
tell primordially whether the content of the experience arises from within or
without, insofar as no such distinction can be made. What is often taken to arise
from within, be it pain, hunger or any other affective state, is experienced as a
property of the world among external objects.
The principle of psychic equivalence is the psychological and developmental
counterpart of a first-order representational view of phenomenal consciousness,
according to which the latter consists in analogue or fine-grained contents that
are available to the first-order processes that guide thought and action (Dretske
1995; Tye 1995). So, a phenomenally conscious percept of red, for example,
consists in a state with the analogue content red which is tokened in such a way
as to feed into thoughts about red, or into actions that are in one way or another
guided by redness.
According to first-order representational theories, phenomenal

consciousness presents us with nothing except for external objects and their
properties:
Conscious mental states – experiences, in particular – are states that we

are conscious with, not states we are conscious of. They are states that make
us conscious, not states that we make conscious by being conscious of them.
(Dretske 1995, 100–1)
In justifying the claim that conscious experience does not involve awareness
of experience, the argument from transparency is often invoked. We normally
‘see right through’ perceptual states to external objects and do not even notice
that we are in perceptual states; the properties we are aware of in perception are
attributed to the objects perceived.14
Against the background of this first-order representationalism, we can
introduce the notion of bodily self-consciousness. When infants, from birth,
explore the environment, they entertain a rich collection of objectual conscious
states; and in exploring the environment they soon discover a particular object,
that is, their body. Or, more precisely, they discover parts of their body: they are
conscious, for instance, of their hands (without ‘knowing’, of course, that they
are their hands). This is the beginning of a crucial step, since, for an organism to
achieve self-consciousness, its consciousness must first apply to a particular object,
which is precisely the body. Indeed, we will argue that the most elementary form
of self-consciousness is the capacity to represent one’s own body as an entire object
while considering it as a subject, that is, as the source of the representation.
Once again, this way of conceiving self-consciousness is already in Brentano’s
descriptive psychology. Among the possible objects of consciousness, Brentano
says, there is a very special one, which is the subject itself, and this is bodily
self-consciousness. Thus, self-consciousness is not a primary, elemental, simple
awareness of the self, preceding any other form of knowing; rather, it is a
variation of our relationship to the world:
As Schopenhauer had already noted, and unlike Kant, Brentano thinks that self-
consciousness is not a basic modality of consciousness, is not a primary and
simple knowing of being there, but consists in watching itself, seeking after itself,
and hence it is from the very beginning a knowing of being there in a certain
way. Indeed, Schopenhauer had already raised the suspicion that this knowing
of being there is never exhaustive, in the sense that it is a search for itself always
unsatisfactory, and hence interminable. (Jervis 2011, 71; translation ours)
Locke had well seen that personal identity is a matter of work and conquest.
2
The psychological toolkit
More than forty years after the famous confrontation between Noam Chomsky
and Jean Piaget at the Royaumont Abbey, today we can retrace the complex
history of contemporary developmental psychology with a more irenic and
conscious perspective. This is the perspective of our book, which addresses the
themes of construction and defence of personal identity backgrounded by a
synthesis of ideas classically considered at odds, or at least in friction, with each
other. The ingredients of this synthesis are three.
First: as also some neo-Piagetian psychologists recognized (the most famous

case is from Annette Karmiloff-Smith), the newborn can count on a
repertoire of competencies that is much wider than what was thought in
1975, the year of Royaumont. Such competencies do not concern only –
as Piaget thought – the sensorimotor sphere, but also – as Chomskyans
claim – the conceptual one.
Second: it is possible to use certain elements from a sociocultural
perspective on development to incorporate into a Piagetian individual-
based constructivism the idea that interpersonal relationships crucially
affect the dynamics of the mind.
Third: infant research – an area crosscutting developmental psychology and
psychoanalysis of object relations – brought the constructs of motivation
and attachment into the systematic research of the child’s first forms of
cognitive-affectional relationality.
A philosophical and methodological reflection on the hypotheses and data

provided by such research traditions will delineate a constructive perspective on
development, systematically weaving together cognitive, social and motivational
components. This is the framework enabling us to elaborate a model for the
construction of personal identity firmly rooted in the Jamesian theory of
subjective identity.
1. The Jamesian self in the framework

of Darwinian naturalism
James’ theory of subjective identity falls within the framework of Darwinian

naturalism – the same framework within which James conceived his functionalistic
theory of mental processes.1 The latter is in fact an extensive attempt to model
psychology on Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection; and he can be
considered the ‘first double-barrelled Darwinian psychologist’ since he employs
selectionist logic at both phylogenetic and ontogenetic levels (McGranahan
2018, 31, 37).
Moreover, James defined himself as ‘a rabid individualist’ (1992–2004, vol.
9, 625), claiming several times that the individual is the starting point for
understanding the world. In The Principles of Psychology, for instance, he wrote
that ‘the mind which the psychologist studies is the mind of distinct individuals
inhabiting definite portions of a real space and of a real time’ (James 1981,
vol. 1, 183). It is impossible to separate Darwinism and individualism in his
work: his use of Darwinian concepts seeks precisely to ground an analysis of
individual agency. The individual organism is seen as a real locus of agency in
its world environment. In his controversy with Herbert Spencer’s Lamarckism,
which sets the analysis ‘from outside to inside’, James claims that ontogenesis or
phylogenesis of the mental cannot be reduced to a process where the mind is
shaped so that it adapts to a coercive environment: ontogenesis and phylogenesis
are in part directed by internal processes.
Therefore, James’ pragmatism is naturalistic in a Darwinian sense, insofar
as it conceives human beings as organisms produced by evolution, organisms
developing in a natural world. However, it is naturalistic also in a Quinean sense.
Indeed, James’ rejection of foundationalism is in one respect similar to Quine’s
denial of the first philosophy, to his claim of the continuity of philosophy with
science and to the rejection of what he calls the ‘cosmic exile’ (Quine 1960, 21).2
This kind of naturalism professes ‘a resolute scepticism in the face of any “higher
level” of inquiry that purports to stand above the level of ordinary science’
(Maddy 2001, 39). If in the Kantian scheme there are the methods of science, at
the empirical level, and the methods of conceptual analysis, at the transcendental
level, naturalistic philosophers see themselves as members of the scientific
community; they regard the methods and techniques of science as the best way
to find out about the world. In light of this rejection of the two-level scheme, the
selfing process (which we introduced in the Introduction) should be viewed as the
activity of a psychobiological system, and not as a Kantian synthetic function. As
The Psychological Toolkit 15
argued in the first chapter (Section 3), in Kant’s philosophical psychology the
person is always given in its unity, as if the psychological level of analysis were
always and, in any case, guaranteed by the transcendental level of analysis. This,
however, does not hold in light of what, in particular, the psychodynamic clinic
tells us about the selfing process: here the empirical subject is primarily non-
unitary and gains a sense of unity in the act of mobilizing resources against the
threat of disintegration (Jervis 1993, 298).
Kantian transcendentalism investigates self-consciousness with the ‘top-
down’ perspective that philosophical psychology traditionally adopted, that is,
beginning from introspective self-knowledge. Conversely, naturalism brings us
to the idea of a ‘bottom-up’ methodology. Following Darwin in denying any
metaphysical leap from non-human animals to human beings, the naturalist
philosopher takes up the Darwinian maxim that ‘[h]e who understands baboon,
would do more toward metaphysics than Locke’.3 This implies the adoption
of a comparative and ontogenetic approach to self-consciousness, seeking to
reconstruct how the most basic psychological functions lead to those more
complex functions enabling self-awareness in the adult and a socially evolved
world.
In such a perspective, the investigation of subjectivity in a child under one
year old must take as a model the cognitivist studies on animal consciousness.
As we have argued earlier (Chapter 1, Section 5), such studies have claimed the
need to explain animal behaviour in terms of object consciousness, understood
as the ability to create models of reality as well as schemes of action that enable
the cognitive system to interact with things and agents flexibly. In almost all
adult animals, and infants under one year old, the cognitive field is provided
with objects (e.g. models of places or representations of other agents), but it is
extremely unlikely that it includes the subject itself. We believe that cognitive
ethology and infant cognition research offer plenty of evidence that non-human
animals and infants do not need self-consciousness, not even an embryonic one,
to perform the several complex activities of which they are capable.
Still in the footsteps of James, however, it is good not only to avoid a top-
down approach to self-consciousness and identity but also to shun an excessively
reductionist attitude, providing bottom-up explanations for everything in terms
of neuro-cognitive mechanisms. Although at the heart of James’ reflection there
is an analysis of the individual with firm foundations in neurophysiology (see
in Chapter 4 the discussion of his theory of emotions), he does not believe that
physiological psychology reduces or eliminates other ways to approach mind
and behaviour. It is only a component of a broader investigation of the human
individual conceived as a concrete organism intent on pursuing its goals (see

Franzese 2008).
Here is where a contextualist and systemic perspective comes into play. In
the nineteenth century, the Darwinian theory had already tried to define the
characteristics of animal species, their behavioural characteristics included, as a
function of the environmental context. The premises of modern contextualism
have indeed a naturalistic matrix and were developed in the work of early
ethologists. Nonetheless, the general methodology of the contextualist approach
was systematized only by Kurt Lewin in the 1930s and then matured around the
years of the Second World War with cybernetic studies and the birth of systems
theory. Later, among first-generation cognitivists, Neisser (1976) was the most
sensitive to a contextual-environmental perspective on cognition.
The contextualist and systemic orientation in psychology is homogeneous with
today’s dominant approaches in both biology and sociology. Here, the so-called
‘systemic school’ accentuates, along particular lines, a more general tendency:
that of locating the individual’s psychological problems (both behavioural and
subjective) in the interindividual and social context in which they arise and
obtain a sense. When the tendency is homogeneous with current directions in
biology, it takes the form of a systemic naturalism which incorporates insights
from James’ Darwinian psychology and the functionalist school of Chicago. As
we shall immediately see, this is the foundation of John Bowlby’s attachment
theory, namely, the ethological-evolutionary approach to dynamic psychology
through which a neo-Jamesian account of the self can take on board the defensive
component inherent to the construction of subjective identity.
2. From the Hobbesian individual to the mother–child dyad
2.1. First, the unconscious, then consciousness

The attachment theory is the project of a dynamic psychology within the
Darwinian methodological framework, which is nourished by contributions
from cognitive psychology and neurosciences. This dynamic psychology gathers
the critical content of Freudian psychoanalysis: the development of a theory
of the unconscious that can serve as an organ of critique for self-conscious
subjectivity. However, some clarifications are in order.
In present-day dynamic psychology the unconscious is ‘a cognitive
unconscious of beliefs, self, object and interactional representations, and implicit
assumptions and expectations regarding how significant others will behave
toward oneself ’ (Eagle 2011, 130). Within this framework, consciousness is no

longer an unquestionable assumption, a non-negotiable given fact; the concept
of the cognitive unconscious is no longer patterned, as in Freud, after the concept
of the conscious mind. Freud’s definition of the unconscious is still given by its
difference from – and in some respects also dependence upon – the definition
of consciousness; and the latter is taken as a self-evident, primary datum,
although it is then criticized and diminished in comparison with the traditional,
idealistic view.4 By contrast, contemporary psychological science reverses the
explanatory relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. First,
a theory of representational capacities of mind and their role in behaviour
control (i.e. a theory of intentionality) is to be built, which is independent of
consciousness and more fundamental; a theory able to treat in the same way
every form of unconscious representational mentality – and therefore ‘in brains,
in computers, in evolution’s “recognition” of properties of selected designs’
(Dennett 1991, 457). Then, on such bases, one proceeds to develop a theory of
consciousness conceived as ‘an advanced or derived mental phenomenon’ and
not idealistically as ‘the foundation of all intentionality, all mentality’ (Dennett
1993, 193). Accordingly, cognitive science’s subpersonal processes show features
different from those of consciousness: whereas the latter seems to be unitary,
serial, language-like and receptive to global properties, the former are multiple,
parallel, non-linguistic and oriented to the processing of local properties.
Backed by such methodological overturning, psychological sciences provide
cues and notions taking up and elaborating on the themes of psychoanalytic
tradition, making its demystifying character stronger.
2.2. The critique of the Hobbes–Freud scheme

The work of demystification of psychological sciences addresses, among other
things, what we can characterize as the culturalist declination of Cartesian
dualism. On the one hand, there is our most noble, least animal part (the soul,
the ego, the rational mind), connected to self-conscious rationality and civility,
from which only optimal, cooperative and ‘mature’ sociality can arise. On the
other hand, there is our instinctive-impulsive part, less rationally conscious,
more immediate, less reflective, asocial and perhaps also destructive.
According to such a premise, sociality is a ‘secondary’ reality. The individual,
instead, is seen as an isolated primary subject, a priori ‘given’ as autonomous
– who ‘then’ moves towards others, lives socially, and creates structures.
This conception of individuals, which found its most radical consecration in
Hobbes’ pessimistic anthropology, was laid down by Freud as the foundation

of psychoanalysis. The Freudian individuals are primarily isolated organisms,
in search of other individuals who enable the discharge of their instinctual
energies. Therefore, the bond that newborn infants establish with the mother
is seen as secondary, that is, derivative, in two senses. In the first place, the
original condition of newborns is characterized by primary narcissism, a sort
of monadic self-sufficiency from which infants emerge only under the urge of
their primitive sexual drives. In the second place, the bond with the mother (the
love attachment to her) is seen as secondary to these drives themselves, that is,
subsequent to the cathexis of the mother’s breast by the libidinal energy in its
original oral modality.
Starting from 1914, with Totem and Taboos, Freud develops the
anthropological philosophy already implicit in the claims stated earlier, by
systematizing some ideas concerning the relationship between the Oedipus
complex and the origin of social repression. The individuals, bearers of
intrinsically asocial and antisocial impulsive-instinctual tendencies, would
tend to discharge these energies. However, first the father (‘the tribal patriarch’)
and then the social world forces them to repress these tendencies. Precarious
situations arise from this, namely, a compromise between social repression and
the tendency to instinctual discharge, situations that are conflictual and the
source of uneasiness.
In the Hobbes–Freud schema, therefore, egoism is natural, cooperation
an artifice. Nevertheless, rather than starting from adult self-consciousness,
ethologists and developmental psychologists have been engaged in a systematic
investigation of the humble life of animals and the simplest and most precocious
forms of interaction between individuals. This led them to formulate a new
hypothesis: adaptive-cooperative activity is primary, and therefore contextual
to the very definition of the individual organism. Complex animals cannot be
separated either from their environment or from forms of cooperation. In the
human species, neither asocial nor pre-social individuals exist. Contrary to
what Freud believed, newborn infants are by no means isolated little beings,
laboriously learning to come to terms with the world, but they are social beings
wishing to have relationships with others, and above all to interact – in a mutually
cooperative way – with the mother and their other caregivers.5
These are the socially competent children the object-relations theories
and attachment theories talk about. They are individuals whose primordial
psychological needs are not about the oral libido, but the physical contact and
construction of protective and communicative interpersonal structures – a
primary need for ties and protection around which their mental life gradually
takes shape. These individuals are then the bearers of a very complex set of
motivations, and these are always and from the outset relational, that is, they
take into account the presence of others and are articulated in an interpersonal
interplay of communicative strategies.
Here, it is important to note, the term ‘motivation’ should be taken in a
descriptive sense and not in an explanatory sense. It is used in current treatises
on psychology to refer to the complex of all those factors that trigger, maintain,
intensify, modulate or interrupt any physical activity or psychological event. It
is therefore easy to realize that the term groups together a multitude of non-
homogeneous factors that are difficult to classify and list. Therefore, its usefulness
must be assessed on a case-by-case basis: sometimes it is better to examine the
factors in question separately; at other times it is useful to consider them all
together under the label ‘motivations’.
The latter is the case with Lichtenberg’s (1989) taxonomy of motivational
systems, which is the most famous among modern classifications of motivations,
a point of convergence between the psychoanalytic tradition and the systematic
investigations on infancy. These systems are identified by Lichtenberg in clusters
of needs relating to (1) psychic regulation of physiology, (2) attachment and
affiliation, (3) exploration and assertion, (4) withdrawal and antagonism, (5)
sensual enjoyment and later sexual excitement.
Note, however, that the systems (4) and (5) are largely dependent, the former
on the exploratory-assertive system and the latter on the attachment-affiliation
system. Consequently, there could only be two basic motivational orientations
(see Jervis 2001, 84). First, the interpersonal, cooperative, elementarily
socializing motivational system of attachment-affiliation – it could be called ‘the
basic prosocial mode’, or ‘the system of elementary structures of doing together’
(see, e.g., Richerson and Boyd 2005; Hrdy 2009). The second system is dedicated
to self-assertion and competition – it could be called ‘the system of elementary
structures of individual autonomy’, ‘self-assertiveness’ or ‘possible competition’
(see, e.g., Byrne and Whiten 1988; Whiten and Byrne 1997). Between these two
systems, spontaneous compromise situations arise, which can be intelligent,
articulate and ingenious, and are characterized not so much by Freudian
discomfort as by the fact that they create wealth and culture.
From this emerges an anthropology that is neither pessimistic nor optimistic:
individuals are naturally inclined to competition (and sometimes destructiveness)
but also to forms of sociality, cooperation and even altruism. What is more:
competitiveness and cooperation go hand in hand. There is no cooperation
without competitiveness and no competitiveness without cooperation. This is a

natural foundation of human as well as animal behaviour.
As we shall now see, bringing order to the sphere of motivations by postulating
a dialectic between the attachment-affiliation system and the affirmative-
exploratory system is the strategy adopted by John Bowlby to reconstruct the
cognitive-affective development of the child.
2.3. The contextualistic and systemic approach in

attachment theory
The contextualistic and systemic approach informs the object-relations theory.
The credit for founding this theory should be given to Alice and Michael Balint.
In their criticism of the Freudian idea of primary narcissism and in speaking
of a ‘primary love’ as a primary bond, in emphasizing the risks of a ‘primary
deficiency’ as a deficiency, indeed, of the foundational mother–child relationship,
in stating that the (original) object relation is based on the (dual) relationship
and not on the instinctual discharge, the Balints’ thought stands as a genuine
methodological turning point (see, e.g., Balint 1985, 1992).
It was mainly Donald Winnicott and John Bowlby who built on the
foundational work of the Balints. According to Winnicott, what makes sense is
not considering the infant in itself, but the mother–infant dyad as an affective
communication system. In Bowlby’s view, the attachment bond is a crucial
constitutive aspect of the mental life of very young children and a grounding
theme of subsequent interpersonal relationships.
Taking cues from the ethological researchers of his time,6 Bowlby (1969–
80) identified the necessity to protect oneself from predators as the key to
the evolutionary explanation of the infant’s tendency to seek proximity to the
caregiver. The primary object love theorized by the Balints becomes an inborn
attachment system,7 which operates throughout the entire course of life but
it is hyperactive during childhood, given the long period of immaturity and
dependence on parental care that characterizes the more evolved species, and
especially the human infant.
The attachment system includes ‘signals’ such as crying or smiling which serve
to bring about or maintain proximity to the caregiver. Certainly, these signals
can be effective only if an adult responds to them by engaging in caregiving
behaviour. The attachment system has therefore its complement in a caregiving
system. In Winnicott’s parent–infant dyad, the two ‘instincts’ match perfectly
as a lock-and-key mechanism: babies emit continuous signals of weakness and
need for protection, promptly heard by adults, who, in turn, effectively show
their propensity for care.
Indeed, not only are newborns programmed by their psychobiological
nature and the history of their neonatal life to seek the protection and warmth
of the primary attachment figure; they are also programmed to venture
out from it to explore their surroundings. For infants beginning to move
autonomously, venturing away from the caregiver is the purest expression of
an assertive-explorative motivational system. This curiosity about the world is
in no way reducible to a mere survival drive, and neither to libidinal drives,
as hypothesized by early psychoanalysts. Rather, it confirms Piaget’s idea that
children are learning machines – as well as being machines building affectional
bonds.
Now, for babies crawling or attempting their first steps, the better their
relationship with their attachment figure is, the more explorative they will be.
Infants explore and venture out because the mother is what Bowlby calls their
‘secure base’ (they know they will be able to come back to her at any time), but
also because they, so to speak, carry within themselves the image of their mother
and therefore her protective, affiliative quality. After all, the entire cognitive-
affective trajectory of the individual is always marked by this dialectic between
attachment and autonomization.
Such dialectic was systematically investigated thanks to standardized
observational procedures, among which the first and still most used is the
strange situation (Ainsworth et al. 2015). In a room with toys, the mother (or,
more generically, the caregiver) and her baby (typically 12–18 months old) are
joined by an unknown adult. The caregiver then leaves the room and comes back
after a few minutes.
Four different styles of attachment emerge from the analysis of the strange
situation and tend to persist into adulthood, as attested by the Adult Attachment
Interview, a semistructured interview assessing the features of recalling past
episodes and the capacity of self-reflection. While secure attachment is typical
of well-attuned dyads, insecure styles occur between a child and a caregiver
who is excessively cold and detached (avoidant style), who alternates between
excessive involvement and inattention (ambivalent style) or is unpredictable and
inconsistent (disorganized style).
These different attachment styles affect the content of Internal Working Models,
which are mental representations produced by the internalization of relational
experiences with parental figures. Throughout the life cycle – according to
Bowlby – they will significantly contribute to determining the goals of actions,
ensuring (or obstructing) a sense of continuity and consistency with the past,
the present and the future self.
Having traced the outlines of object relations theory and attachment theory,
we can examine how these theories make use of the systemic perspective to
study relationality.
There is a long tradition in theoretical biology – the so-called ‘evolutionary
systems theory’ – where the separation of the individual organism from the
environment makes no sense. From this perspective, both the developments of
Darwin’s theory and the modern concepts of equilibrium, adaptation, innate/
acquired interrelation and ecological niche lead us to consider the individual-
environment structure as a single systemic whole, where neither of the two
poles is primary over the other. In animals as well as in human beings the
development of the organism from the fertilized egg to reproduction and death
consists in a series of structured interactions, each of which builds itself based
on the previous one, and each of which sees the interaction, on the one hand of
the onset of new environmental signals, and on the other, the gradual opening of
new inner potentialities developed during the previous stages.8
As already noted, in the case of biological inspiration the consideration
of psychological phenomena in terms of equilibria, and hence of systemic
interactions, has a naturalistic origin and is in continuity with James and the
Chicago school of functionalism. Things change, however, when the systemic
approach to the mind has a sociological origin. Indeed, in sociology the systemic
focus on interaction rather than on the individual often takes over, leading to
the situation against which it aimed to struggle, that is, a conception in which
(individual) biology and (social) relationality are split from each other, in that
the former is deleted and the latter becomes all-encompassing. The result is a
form of sociologism radically opposing systemic naturalism: while the latter
views each animal (and the human being itself) as biologically part of the
environment before being sociologically and culturally part of it, the systemic
approach of sociological origin produces a ‘pure’, disembodied or formalistic
relationalism, where the existence itself of living and real organisms is ignored,
with the consequent loss of that ‘processing’ dimension of the agent, which,
instead, is at the centre of our book.
A good example of this unwelcome outcome is provided by those forms of
sociolinguistic constructivism in which psychological phenomena are produced
in social interaction, and above all in the context of ‘conversation’, beyond which
there is no mental process; mental processes are nothing but our conversational
interactions. From here it is a short step to seeing persons not as the actors in
or the agents of discourses, but rather as the products of the discursive practices
themselves (see, e.g., Harré 1987).
Another path to pure relationism is a radical form of externalism that was
put forward by some proponents of the dynamical approach to cognition (or
‘dynamicism’) – an approach that has been widely applied in developmental
psychology (starting with the classic Thelen and Smith 1994). According to some
defenders of the dynamical approach to cognitive modelling, the dynamical
analysis identifies the critical variables characterizing the state of a system and
attempts to construct laws (a set of differential equations) to account for the
system’s trajectory through state space. The system can no longer be decomposed
into subsystems (modules) that involve computations on representations.
Consequently, the dynamical explanation is seen as incompatible with the
explanatory style of the computationalist mechanism (see Chemero 2009; and
references in Chemero and Silberstein 2008, 11–13).
Most important for the current discussion, dynamicism dissolves the
boundary between the cognitive system and the system’s environment.
Coupling between the equations describing a cognizing system and those
describing the environment gives rise to complex ‘total system’ behaviours. In
this perspective,
the cognitive system is not just the encapsulated brain; rather, since the nervous
system, body, and environment are all constantly changing and simultaneously
influencing each other, the true cognitive system is a single unified system
embracing all three. (van Gelder 1995, 373)
The role of the brain thus blurs in a conception of reality in which entities are
undifferentiated variables and processes – a Machian view, on some aspects
(Marraffa and Paternoster 2012, 35).
In brief, dynamicism puts forward ‘the radical embodied cognition thesis’:
to understand the complex interplay of brain, body and environment we do
not need either the concepts of internal representation and computation or
the mechanistic decomposition of a cognitive system into a multiplicity of
inner neuronal or functional subsystems; all we need are the analytic tools and
methods of dynamical systems theory (Clark 1997, 148).
This revolutionary interpretation of dynamicism can be contrasted with
Andy Clark’s and William Bechtel’s reformist projects, which aim to amend the
computational and representational framework by drawing together insights
from explanatory pluralism, mechanistic analysis and dynamicism. Clark (1997)
suggests that dynamical and computational-mechanistic explanatory patterns
ought to interlock in a complete explanation of cognition, a claim that has been

explored in depth by Bechtel (2008).
Bechtel and Richardson (2010) argue that the study of biological systems
reveals a continuum. At one end of the spectrum, we have fully decomposable
systems, which are composed of subsystems that are completely independent
except for the mutual exchange of outputs. If the interactions among the
subsystems are weak but not negligible, the system is nearly decomposable. As
the complexities of interaction among parts increase, the explanatory burden
shifts from the parts to the organization of the parts (i.e. the interactions
between subsystems). Thus, we reach the other end of the spectrum, where we
find holistic systems, whose components are functionally equivalent and hence
interchangeable. In between the nearly decomposable systems and the holistic
ones, there are the ‘integrated systems’: in these systems, unlike the holistic
ones, it is possible to isolate different parts that make distinctive contributions,
but also give rise to a complex set of nonlinear interactions, and hence much
stronger than those of a nearly decomposable system.
Now, both Bechtel (2008) and Clark (1997) suggest that psychobiological
cognition is likely to take up the intermediate space between nearly
decomposability and holism, namely that of integrated systems; and in an
integrated system, the mechanistic analysis provides the foundation for
dynamical analysis since the latter has explanatory force only insofar as it
describes the operations of the underlying mechanism, only to the extent that it
reveals aspects of the causal structure of a mechanism (Kaplan and Bechtel 2011;
Kaplan and Craver 2011). Bechtel and Abrahamsen (2010) refer to accounts
integrating the mechanistic decomposition of systems into parts and operations
with the quantitative tools provided by dynamical systems theory as ‘dynamic
mechanistic explanations’.
This attempt to reconcile dynamical modelling and mechanistic analysis is
particularly relevant here since Griffiths and Tabery (2013) have convincingly
argued that the explanations at which developmental systems theory aims are
mechanistic explanations, and often dynamical mechanistic explanations, of the
developmental potential of the system. A good example is Greenwood’s (2015)
epigenetic model of emotional development, which supplements ‘classical forms
of mechanistic explanation with dynamical explanations’ (Griffiths 2017, 389).
Armed with these clarifications, we return to object relations theory. There is
nothing in this theory that renders it ineluctably liable to pure relationism. Quite
the contrary: it is wrong to think that the theory of object relations is, as such,
relational. The notion of object relationship does not strictly and per se imply
an interactionist theory, let alone a systemic theory. Indeed, here the subject can
still be seen as primary to the object. In other words, we can still have a relation
in the traditional sense, namely in a one-directional sense. In that case, we still
do not have a relational theory in the strict sense, that is, a theory focused on the
forms of interactive dialectics that constantly generate new dynamic equilibria.
That being the case, the different versions of the theory of object relations fit
into different parts of the spectrum that from the classical conception of the
subject seen as primary to the object leads to forms of pure relationism. So we
should not confuse the claims that minds are shaped by early interactions with
others – and that much that goes on in our mind has to do with our relationships
with others and representations of these relationships (all claims that we can
find in the theory of attachment) – with the radical, social-constructivist claim
that ‘the basic unit of study’ in psychoanalysis is not ‘the individual as a separate
entity’ but ‘an interactional field’, which can be found in the relational theory of
Mitchell (1988, 3).
3. In search of a synthesis
Having distanced ourselves from the various forms of sociological antinaturalism

present in the debate on personal identity, we can undertake our investigation
of how the living and real information-processing organism constructs its own
subjective identity. As anticipated in the incipit of the chapter, this will mean
making a synthesis between historically opposed positions, such as Chomskyan
innatism and Piagetian constructivism. To this end, a crucial role will be played
by the sociocultural perspective of Lev Vygotsky, canonically considered
the antagonist of Piagetian egocentricity and about as far from Chomskyan
internalism as one can conceive. In particular, some elements highlighted by
Vygotsky enable us to downsize the excessive individualism of the Piagetian
research tradition by emphasizing those dimensions of identity self-construction
of the subject originating from the network of interpersonal relationships. As
already mentioned, this is a lesson fully assimilated by the attachment theory.
3.1. Piaget’s individual-based constructivism and Chomsky’s

nativist turn
In the study of the mind, the transition from the traditional top-down
approach to the bottom-up one marks a methodological change that Piaget
defined as de-centring of the subject: ‘the subject’s activity calls for a continual
“de-centring” without which he cannot become free from his spontaneous
intellectual egocentricity’ (Piaget 1970, 139). Under this approach, in the 1920s
Piaget refounded the studies in child psychology by beginning investigations
on how children see and explain reality from their autonomous, original
viewpoint.
The outcome of this investigation is epigenetic constructivism. This theory,
attempting to overcome the traditional innate/acquired distinction, states that
cognitive competencies are built from the synthesis of two factors: on the one
hand, the maturation and differentiation in stages of the intrinsic capacities
of the mind and on the other, the active adaptation of the individual to the
environment. This adaptation occurs through the construction of schemes,
organized sets of movements and operations. The processes at the basis of
adaptation are assimilation and accommodation, each complementing one other.
Assimilation consists of the integration of a new object or situation into the set of
objects or situations already belonging to an existing scheme (e.g. encountering
new objects leads to expanding the prehension scheme). Inversely, and at the
same time, the pre-existing scheme is accommodated, which makes it more
flexible and general (e.g. the different sizes, weights or shapes of new objects
determine an adjustment to the modalities of prehension). Thus, the cognitive-
operational schemes grow by self-construction, that is, they self-reproduce
by enhancing themselves with experience, structure themselves according
to different gradients of complexity and then are constantly ‘reconstructed’
throughout life.
In Piaget’s theory of development, behaviour and knowledge, and persons
themselves, are individual (rather than social) constructions. This self-
construction has as a starting point a repertoire of competencies involving only
the sensorimotor sphere. At birth, children are endowed with sensorimotor
reflexes and representations which, through reiterated processes of assimilation
and accommodation equally innate and precocious,9 progressively give access to
increasingly structured, explicit, symbolic and intentional forms of knowledge
and adaptations to the environment.
In the late 1960s Piagetian minimalism about the initial stage of ontogenesis
drew cutting remarks from the purveyors of developmental psychology inspired
by Chomskyan representational nativism. Piaget – neo-nativist psychologists
claimed – was misled by an inadequate experimental methodology which, by
requiring the child to actively participate in the experimental setting, validated
the image of slow, linear and – as we shall see – ‘horizontal’ development,
namely, independent from the domain of knowledge. Observational data, as

well, focused on what children showed of being able to concretely do.10
Piaget regarded innatism as ‘an easy and rather lazy solution’ but predicted
that ‘after the excesses of explanation by learning alone, a return to nativism is to
be expected’ (1968a, 978); and so it was. The showdown, so to speak, unfolded
with all its drama at the aforementioned Royaumont meeting, with the young
Chomsky in the role of a staunch defender of innatist rationalism through his
hypothesis of universal grammar: it is only by postulating a component shared
by all languages that one can explain the ease and rapidity with which children
acquire the syntax of their language, independently of their IQ and essentially
without adult corrective intervention.
The Royaumont debate, as high in its theoretical level as in its tone, marked the
empirical investigations of the following years. Piattelli Palmarini, an orthodox
Chomskyan who published a thorough report on the meeting (1980) and recently
recalled it (2019), has no doubt about the victory of Chomsky’s neo-nativism.11
Indeed, forty years of investigations on precocious cognitive competencies have
highlighted how much Piaget underestimated the competencies of newborns
and infants. To a great extent, as mentioned, it was precisely his methodology,
focusing on behaviour, that misled the great scholar. Experimental failures
often stemmed more from children’s inability to activate patterns of motor
organization than from their actual lack of knowledge. It sufficed to employ
different experimental methods to shed light on a very different reality, made
up of significantly precocious competencies. Instead of asking children to do
something, the experimenters decided to observe and measure their attention,
as evidenced by their gaze direction or suction force. They then adopted and
refined the habituation-dishabituation technique.12
A huge number of empirical studies revealed the innate and precocious
nature of many other competencies – and not only. If Chomsky views universal
grammar as an innate corpus of knowledge specific to the language domain,
other authors went further, claiming that computational mechanisms – and
consequently the underlying brain regions – are domain-specific as well. Some
restricted their thesis to perceptual systems alone (Fodor 1983), whereas others
extended it to cognitive and metacognitive processes (Sperber 2001).13
According to the core cognition (or core knowledge) hypothesis, infants are born
endowed with a system of conceptual representations, that is, representations
that cannot be reduced to the perceptual primitives postulated by the Empiricists
or to the sensorimotor primitives hypothesized by Piagetians (see Samet 2017,
2.1). For example, Spelke (2022) draws from studies with children and adults
belonging to different cultures, as well as from research on non-human primates,

the hypothesis of a restricted number of core systems that would make possible
an early representation of significant aspects of the environment: inanimate
objects, agents, number and space. Each system is domain-specific, that is, it
hinges on a set of principles that allow entities belonging to a specific domain
(physical objects, agents) to be recognized and reasoned about. For instance,
physical objects do not pass through solid surfaces, agents can autonomously set
themselves in motion and so on. It is based on these domain-specific systems that
agents build more flexible capacities, new concepts and systems of knowledge.
Note that the development of innate cognitive structures is typically
understood as a process of maturation, a problematic notion if taken in the
logic of genetic determinism. However, it is possible to resist this objection
and maintain the crucial point of nativism (i.e. that the endogenous biological
structure determines how organisms learn and respond to their environment)
by combining it with the viewpoint of evolutionary developmental biology
– namely, by arguing that the psychological structures documented by neo-
nativist research are constructed through the interaction of genetic, epigenetic
and external factors (Griffiths and Tabery 2013, 77; Perovic and Radenovic
2011). This perspective is congruent with Piagetian constructivism: Piaget’s
concept of adaptation is partially based on an evolutionary view anticipating the
evolutionary systems perspective (Bjorklund 2015; Campanella 2019; Piattelli
Palmarini 2019).
3.2. Vygotsky’s sociocultural constructivism and methodological

individualism
With due distinctions, methodological individualism is something that
Chomsky and Piaget have in common. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier,
Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural constructivism is, inter alia, a criticism of Piaget’s
individualism. Vygotsky (2012) argued against Piagetian egocentrism, being, on
the contrary, persuaded that language, and in particular linguistic exchanges with
others, precede and ground thought. In the Vygotskian perspective, our mind is
to a significant extent a social construction plastically developing in interaction
with the elements of the background culture, under the guidance and with the
scaffolding of adult members of the community. The guidance of expert adults
is essential to the process through which children (who also in this perspective
are held devoid of innate competencies) develop their abilities in each cognitive
domain. Indeed, each level of understanding is achieved within a social context,
and only later is it (progressively) internalized. Taking up a famous example,

consider a child stretching her arms out towards an object, trying to reach it
(Vygotsky 1997a). The adult, who immediately and spontaneously grasps the
communicative meaning of the gesture, satisfies the desire of the child and
hands her the object. This meaning, which has been suggested and made explicit
by the adult, is shared and internalized by the child: through a social negotiation
of meaning, a failed movement of reaching to grasp becomes a concept available
to inferential processes.
The idea of progressive internalization (or interiorization) of competencies
coming from the outside is also the key to understanding the development of
self-consciousness: ‘[T]he social moment in consciousness is primary in time as
well as in fact. The individual aspect is constructed as a derived and secondary
aspect on the basis of the social aspect and exactly according to its model’
(Vygotsky 1997b, 77).
In positing the primacy of the interpersonal over the intrapersonal, Vygotsky
is very close to Georg H. Mead (see Bruner 1962; Valsiner and van der Veer
2000). According to Mead (1934), too, subjective identity, as well as every other
aspect of mental life, is forged by society through symbolic communication.
Thought arises from the internalization of external conversation, made up not
only of words but also of gestures. Hence the hypothesis of the sociogenesis of
the self: we see ourselves, and define ourselves, essentially through a process
of active internalization of how significant others see and define us. As Mead
(1934) puts it, the basic mechanism for the development of self-consciousness
is ‘the individual’s becoming an object to himself by taking the attitudes of other
individuals toward himself within an organized setting of social relationships’
(p. 225).14
In a clinical context, Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) was the first to grasp
the significance of the concept of self as developed by Mead, exploiting it in
the study of interpersonal relationships and the inner dialectics associated
with these relationships. More recently, the constructivist approach has been
consolidated in developmental psychopathology, taking the form of the thesis
that ‘unrealistically negative dysfunctional self-attributions are seen to arise
from attempts to rationalise the abusive or seriously neglective child-directed
behaviors of attachment figures’ (Gergely 2002, 42).
For our part, we will adhere to a constructivist model in which social
scaffolding is inextricably linked with the maturation of the endogenous
psychobiological system. We will investigate those neurocognitive mechanisms
that enable children to immerse themselves into the social world, making it so
that social interaction works as scaffolding for their development. As Gerrans

puts it,
individualism is not inconsistent with social interaction; it is required to

explain it. Social exchanges, evidenced in gaze monitoring, social referencing,
emotional responses, protodeclarative and imperative pointing, pretence, play,
and conversation all play a role in development, but the nature of that role is
opaque without an understanding of the cognitive mechanisms on which they
depend. (2004, 107)
Couldn’t have said it better. In the remainder of this book, we shall thoroughly
articulate such constructivism, starting from the processing individual. We shall
propose the image of an individual who is born ‘pre-wired’ for interpersonal
relationships. Such wiring is the basis of the construction of an identity that is
contextual and interactive from the outset.
3
From bodily awareness to bodily self-awareness
After outlining the bottom-up and systemic-relational naturalistic approach

within which we aim to build on the Jamesian theory of the self, this chapter
begins to investigate the process of construction of subjective identity.
The external world, the inner world of the mind and the visceral world enclosed
within the confines of the body constitute the three primary existential spaces
in which the universal field of human experientiality is distributed and ordered.
Against this background, the concept of self-consciousness (or, equivalently,
self-awareness) implies different levels of complexity. At the (relatively) simplest
level, self-consciousness is bodily self-awareness: our capacity to form a body
image of ourselves as an entire object and associate this with ourselves as a
subject – the active source of the representation of ourselves. On the other hand,
at a maximally evolved level, self-consciousness is something more complex: it
is the introspective recognition of the presence of the virtual inner space of the
mind, separated from the other two primary experiential spaces, namely, the
bodily and the extra-bodily space.
Our view of the ontogeny of bodily self-awareness is constructivist through
and through.
Numerous experimental data show that from the very first weeks of life, self-
specifying proprioceptive and kinaesthetic information is precociously available
to infants. These findings have been interpreted as evidence in favour of the
thesis that long before the acquisition of a conceptual and objective form of self-
consciousness, a pre-reflective sense of ownership for one’s body is already present
in preverbal infants. To this thesis we will oppose a more cautious reading of
these same findings, arguing that postnatal infants are immersed in a subjectivity
that they are unable to objectify; they are already agents but do not yet know it,
because, in place of a unified representation of their body as recognizable as
their own body, they possess only fragmented and incomplete perceptions of
their bodies.
It is only in the second year of life that infants become able to construct a
body image of themselves as an entire object, while at the same time considering
this image as a subject, that is, as an active source of self-representation. Here
the subject recognizes a new type of object of consciousness: the object is the
subject itself, or rather the objectified image of it (‘I am there’). This occurs
through mediation with the caregiver within the attachment environment;
bodily self-awareness is therefore a cognitive acquisition that requires seeing
oneself through the eyes of the other, that is, identifying oneself in someone who
is looking at us. As Winnicott puts it, ‘[i]n individual emotional development
the precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face’ (2005, 149). The other is thus
alter-ego, the mirror function through which the body recognizes itself and is
accepted as a whole.1
Self-consciousness in its simplest form, namely, as awareness of existing, is,
therefore, the representation of a physical self.2 We access the idea of existing
only because we become able to identify ourselves ‘in the flesh’, namely, insofar
as we ‘know’ that we are individuals with certain characteristics, which are
primarily physical, physiognomic and bodily characteristics.
More in general, we know that we exist only insofar as we know that we exist
in a certain way, that is, with determined characteristics, as a describable identity.
Observing and studying infants during the second year of age, we realize
that there is no difference between the construction of their self-awareness
(now corporeal, physical, but then also psychological, introspective) and the
construction of their identity.
1. The initial state: Sensitivity for contingency
A large set of studies have demonstrated that very young children can estimate
the degree of causal relatedness between responses and stimuli, and detect
visual-proprioceptive temporal contingency arising from their movements.
Here are some influential examples.
Infants’ contingency detection is commonly tested using the preferential-
looking method. In a seminal study by Bahrick and Watson (1985), three- to
five-month-old infants were presented with two screens side-by-side. One
screen displayed a live transmission of the infant’s legs and feet (perfectly
contingent display), while the other screen showed either the legs and feet
of a peer wearing the same clothes or a video clip of the infant’s movements
recorded shortly before the experiment. In these cases, the level of contingency
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ASSEMBLING THE GUN.
Reverse all the foregoing operations with the exception that the
recoiling portions must be replaced before the packing and packing
gland. In order to assemble the barrel and breech casings, they will
have to be turned upside-down—i.e., the filling hole down, and the
bottom plate of breech casing uppermost—they should be positioned
by the crosshead joint pin. Care must be taken that the ejector tube
spring is in position before joining the casings together. When
assembling the feed block the longer of the two bottom pawls must
always be placed at the front. When assembling the tangent sight, it
will be found convenient to place the slide on the stem before
attaching the milled head; in this position the pinion is prevented
from turning with the pawl when engaging the arms of the slide
spring outside the lugs in the pawl.
REPLACEMENT OF DEFECTIVE PARTS OF
THE LOCK.
Should any of the components belonging to the lock become
defective they can be replaced from the spare parts, without
stripping the lock right down. Proceed as follows:—
(i) Sear.
Fully cock, lift the sear, and let the firing pin engage with the
tumbler and trigger; with the lock on the bench, left side up, drive
out the sear axis pin, and remove the sear with its spring.
(ii) Tumbler.
Fully cock, thus engaging the firing pin with the sear; drive out the
axis pin of tumbler, pull the trigger slightly, and lift out the tumbler.
Note.—Care should be taken not to allow the screwed head to lift
the sear when once the tumbler has been removed.
(iii) Trigger, Lock Spring or Extractor Levers.
Release the lock spring, drive out the lock spring axis pin, remove
the keeper bracket, extractor levers and lock spring; if the trigger is
defective, drive out the trigger axis pin and remove the trigger.
(iv) Firing Pin.
Proceed as for (iii), but do not remove the trigger. Remove the
tumbler axis pin and tumbler, raise the sear, push the screwed head
out of its way, and the firing pin will drop out.
(v) Gib, Gib Spring, or Extractor Spring.
This will necessitate the removal of the extractor from the face of
the lock casing. Release the lock spring, drive out the lock spring axis
pin, remove the keeper bracket and extractor levers; next drive out
the keeper pin of the extractor stop, remove the latter, and slide the
extractor off the lock casing: push out the gib spring cover, and
remove the spring or gib as the case may be. If the extractor spring
requires replacing, drive out its fixing pin and remove.
Note.—The serviceable components are replaced in the reverse
order.
STOPPAGES.
1. Temporary.
Due to (a) Failure of some part of the gun of which a duplicate is

carried, or faulty ammunition; (b) neglect on the part of member or
members of the detachment. A high standard of training will avoid
this.
2. Prolonged.
Due to failure of some part of the gun which cannot, as a rule, be

put right under fire, or without skilled assistance.
In addition to the instructions in the “stoppage” table, the
following points should be observed:—
1. If, when the cover is opened to investigate cause of stoppage, it is
seen that extractor is not quite up, no attempt should be made to
raise it. It should be first pushed down before the crank handle is
turned over to the front, as by this means all risk of firing a cartridge
accidentally is avoided.
2. When a temporary stoppage necessitates the employment of the
spare lock, feed block, etc., the part which has been removed should
be repaired as soon as possible, making it again available as a
reserve.
3. Should it ever be necessary to release the lock spring, with the
lock out of gear, this should be done with the extractor fully up, and
firing pin hole opposite firing pin.
4. As the clearing of a stoppage often knocks the sights off the
aiming mark, care should be taken that the gun is immediately
relaid.
TABLE OF STOPPAGES.
I. II. III. IV.
Position of Immediate action. Probable Prevention
crank cause. of
handle recurrence.
and its
indication.
FIRST (i) Turn the crank handle on to the The

buffer spring, pull the belt to the left extractor has
front, and let go the crank handle. not dropped.
This may be
due to:—
Indication. (a) Too
The lock is heavy fusee
unable to spring.
come back (ii) If failure recurs, lighten fusee (b) Excessive (b) Clean
far enough spring by three “turns.” friction, due and oil
to allow to want of working
the oil; grit or parts.
extractor tight pockets Examine
to drop. in the belt, the belt,
or excessive which
packing in should be
cannelure or dried if
packing damp; or if
gland. the
stoppage is
due to a
new or stiff
belt, the
pockets
(c) Partial should be
loss of the plugged. If
force of the due to
explosion excessive
due to— packing,
examine
and repack
(i) Worn cannelure
barrel. or packing
gland.
(ii) Defective (c) (i) The
ammunition. barrel
should be
examined at
the first
opportunity,
and if much
worn in the
lead should
be changed.
SECOND. (i) Force the crank handle on to the (i) (a)

buffer spring. Open the cover and Damaged
examine the cartridge on the face of cartridge.
the extractor. If a damaged The
cartridge, or an undamaged cartridge is
cartridge with the front portion of a unable to
separated case adhering to it, clear enter the
the face of the extractor and re-load. chamber
completely,
although it
has
commenced
to do so.
Indication. (b)
The lock is Separated
unable to case with
go fully front portion
home after adhering to
recoil. undamaged
cartridge.
(ii) If an undamaged cartridge with (ii) (b) If a
no front portion of separated case Separated succession
adhering to it is found on the face of case. The of separated
the extractor, clear the face of the front portion cases occur
extractor and replace the lock, of the case the
keeping the crank handle on the causes an connecting
buffer spring. Take the clearing plug obstruction rod must be
(seeing that the centre pin is back) and prevents lengthened.
and insert it into the chamber. Push the next (See para.
the pin well home by allowing the cartridge 82.)
lock to go forward. Then keeping a from going
firm pressure on the crank handle, into the
give the clearing plug a rocking chamber.
motion; withdraw the lock; lever
back the handle of the clearing plug,
withdraw it (seeing that the front
portion of the separated case is on
the clearing plug) and re-load.
THIRD.
Indication. (i) Strike the crank handle on to (i) (a) Too (i) (b) Clean
The check lever by a glancing blow with light fusee and oil
extractor the palm of the hand. If failure spring. working
is unable recurs, strengthen the fusee spring parts.
to rise to by three turns. (b) Excessive
its highest friction.
position.
If the feed
block slide
is jammed,
there is a
fault in
feed.
Note.—If the continued strengthening of the fusee spring results
in the crank handle stopping in the first position, change the lock,
putting the fusee spring back to normal; if failure recurs take
muzzle attachment into use. (See para. 44.)
(ii) If (i) fails, slightly raise the crank (ii) A (ii)
handle, pull the belt to the left front, cartridge is Carefully
let go the crank handle, and then fed up examine the
strike it down on the check lever. slightly belt.
crossways,
or a long
brass strip is
bent.
(iii) A. If (i) and (ii) fail, examine (iii) A. (1) (iii) A. (1)
feed block slide. If jammed, No. 1 Badly filled Carefully
holds up the crank handle and belt, or a examine the
opens the cover. No. 2, with the belt with new belt.
assistance of No. 1, removes the feed worn or
block, and replaces it by the spare loose
one. pockets. The
Meanwhile No. 1 forces down the cartridges
horns of the extractor, and places projecting
the crank handle on the buffer unevenly
spring. As soon as the spare feed from the belt
block is in position, No. 1 closes the prevent it
cover and pulls the top cartridge of a entering or
fresh belt into position and lets go passing
the crank handle. freely
through the
feed block.
(iii) A. (2) (iii) A. (2)
Belt box not See that the
being in line new belt
with the feed box is in
block; the line.
belt does not
lead up
correctly to
the feed
block and
becomes
jammed.
Note.—The effect of a fault
in feed is that the top pawls,
being engaged behind a
cartridge in the belt, are
held fast when some
obstruction, such as above,
prevents the belt from
passing freely through the
feed block. The recoiling
portions, being connected
by the top and bottom
levers to the slide, are
arrested and prevented
from going home. The
distance they are held back
depends upon the point at
which the obstruction
asserts itself.
(iii) B. If free, No. 1 opens the cover. (iii) B. (1)
No. 2 forces down the horns of the Damaged
extractor. No. 1 clears the face of the cartridge
extractor, and changes the lock. He grooves.
removes the cartridge in positioning (2) Broken
the feed block and re-loads. gib spring.
(3) Broken
gib. In these
cases the
extractor is
prevented
from rising
to its highest
position. It
may be
necessary
sometimes
to slide the
cartridge or
the empty
case
upwards,
when
clearing the
face of the
extractor.
(4) Thick-
rimmed
cartridge.
Note.—If it is apparent that
the stoppage is due to a
thick-rimmed cartridge, it
will not be necessary to
change the lock.
FOURTH. (a) Turn the crank handle on to the (a) (1) No

buffer spring, pull the belt to the left cartridge in
front, and let go the crank handle. the
chamber.
Indication. (2) Defective
That there ammunition.
has been
no
explosion, (b) If (a) fails, place the crank (b) (1)
or, if any, handle on to the buffer spring twice, Broken or
that there change the lock, and re-load. damaged
has been firing pin.
little or no
recoil, the
lock
remaining (2) Broken
in its lock spring.
forward
position.
Note.—If the continued lightening of the fusee spring results in
the crank handle stopping in the third position, take muzzle
attachment into use, and put fusee spring back to normal weight (see
para. 44).
Note.—Worn or damaged side or extractor levers may result in the extractor

being unable to rise, or if the side levers are bent, there may either be a succession
of separated cases, or the lock may become jammed.
The causes of prolonged stoppages are so varied that they cannot

be set out in detail. The following are amongst the most probable,
and the detachment should be thoroughly trained to recognize them
and to apply such remedy as lies in their power pending a permanent
repair:—
(i) Broken Cover Springs.
The extractor may not drop when the lock is drawn back, and the
gun will stop with the crank handle in the first position. This may
possibly be overcome by liberal oiling of the lock, but in any case
single shots can be fired by holding the crank handle forward until
the extractor drops by its own weight.
(ii) Broken Ejector Tube Spring,
Causing either a block in the ejector tube or an accumulation of

empty cases in the breech casing. It may be found possible to keep
the gun in action if care is taken to prevent the latter.
(iii) Cotter working out,
Thus causing the screwed head and connecting rod to become

separated. To remedy proceed as follows:—
(a) Take out the cotter. (This will be found either on the crank
or at the bottom of the breech casing.)
(b) Press down the screwed head with a large screwdriver to
lock the cock.
(c) Turn the screwdriver edgeways and insert it behind the
horns of the extractor and between the face of the barrel
and front of the lock flange, and force the lock to the rear.
(d) Turn crank handle on to the buffer spring, press down the
extractor, raise the lock and remove the live cartridge,
then lift out the lock.
(iv) Damaged Parts of the Lock, no Spare Part being

available.
The gun will fire without the sear, or if the bents of the sear or
firing pin are badly worn or broken off, but only single shots, and
only by pressing and releasing the double button quickly.
The gun will also fire if the nose of the trigger or bent of the
tumbler is badly worn or broken off, but only rapid firing. In this
case the gun will fire the instant the crank handle reaches the check
level, although the double button has not been pressed.
The gun can be worked as follows:—
(a) Group the cartridges in the belt, say 20 or 30 rounds each

group.
(b) Lay the gun before commencing to load, place crank handle
on buffer spring, pull belt to left and let handle go;
repeat, but before allowing the handle to reach check
lever and the gun to fire, grip the rear crosspiece with left
hand to control gun in the ordinary way.
If necessary firing can be stopped by throwing the filled end of the
belt over the breech casing to the left.
When the firing has been stopped as described above, hold the
crank handle with the right hand, open the cover, press down the
horns of the extractor, draw the lock back, and, if there is a live
cartridge on the face of the extractor, remove the feed block and belt,
close the cover, and allow the lock to fly forward, when the live
cartridge, which is on the face of the extractor, will be fired
automatically. The lock can then be changed with safety. On no
account should the lock be allowed to fly forward until the feed block
has been removed and the cover shut.
If, on drawing the lock back, it is found that there is no live
cartridge on its face, the lock may be changed at once, and the
necessity for removing the feed block and the subsequent
precautions will not arise.
(v) Gunmetal Valve Working Loose.
This will prevent the barrel from going home. It may be

temporarily remedied by tapping it round with a hammer and punch,
but it should be tightened at the earliest opportunity with the gib key,
the barrel being removed from the gun.
·303–inch Vickers Gun.
Explanation of Plates IV and V.

Similar numbers indicate corresponding parts in all the plates.
1. Casing, barrel.
2. Tube, steam.
3. Bracket, foresight.
4. Gland.
5. Casing, breech.
6. Cover, front.
7. Cover, rear.
8. Sight, tangent.
9. Bar, trigger.
10. Lock, rear cover.
11. Rear-crosspiece.
12. Lever, firing.
13. Lever, trigger bar.
14. Catch, safety.
15. }
16. } Plugs, screwed.
17. Protector, screwed, condenser boss.
18. Plug, cork.
19. Guide, front barrel bearing.
20. Crosshead.
21. Cams, right and left.
22. Steps of cams, right and left.
23. Catch, front cover.
24. Pin, screwed, joint cover.
25. Pin-T, fixing, rear-crosspiece.
26. Pin, screwed, fixing, crank handle.
27. Slides, right and left.
28. Roller.
29. Pin, screwed, joint, rear-crosspiece.
30. Bracket, check lever.
31. Lever, check.
32. Bracket, elevating joint.
33. Stop, mounting.
34. Plate, bottom, breech casing.
35. Shutter, sliding.
36. Hooks of front cover catch.
37. Hole for keeper pin, front cover catch.
38. Lever of catch, front cover.
39. Grooves in front cover catch to clear “36.”
40. Plunger, front cover catch.
41. Bridge, rear cover.
42. { Spring tangent sight.
{ Piston „ „
43. Grooves in rear cover for ribs on “5.”
44. Ramps, rear cover.
45. Spring, rear cover lock.
46. Spring, trigger bar.
47. Lug on trigger bar for “46.”
48. Base of tangent sight stem.
49. Hooks of rear cover lock.
50. Lug on rear cover lock for “45.”
51. Slot in trigger bar for “86.”
52. Lug on trigger bar for “13.”
53. } Thumbpiece, sliding shutter catch.
54. }
55. Plunger, sliding shutter catch.
56. Arms of rear-crosspiece.
57. Grips, rear-crosspiece.
58. Pawl, firing lever.
59. Spring, safety catch, with piston.
60. Pin, screwed axis, safety catch.
60A. Finger grips, safety catch.
61. Pin, screwed, axis, firing lever.
62. } Thumbpiece, firing lever.
63. }
64. Pin, keeper, check lever.
65. { Piston, check lever.
{ Spring, „ „
66. Recess in check lever for “65.”
67. Barrel.
68. Casing, lock.
69. Plate, side, right.
70. Crank.
71. Handle, crank.
71A. Tail of crank handle.
71B. Knob of crank handle.
72. Rod, connecting.
72A. Stem of connecting rod.
73. Fusee.
73A. Chain, fusee.
74. Spring, fusee.
74A. Hook, fusee spring.
75. Box, fusee spring.
75A. Screw, adjusting, fusee spring.
76. Block, feed.
77. Cannelure in “67” for asbestos packing.
78. Trunnion block, barrel.
79. Lock.
80. Levers, side (pair).
81. Socket of side levers for “72A.”
82. Extractor.
83. Gib.
84. Spring, gib.
85. Cover, gib spring.
86. Trigger.
87. Lever, extractor, right.
88. Tumbler.
89. Spring, lock.
90. Pin, firing.
91. Sear.
92. Spring, sear.
93. Flanges of lock casing.
94. Interruptions in flanges of lock casing.
95. Slots in lock casing for “99.”
96. Bearings on lock casing for “80.”
97. Upper extractor stop of lock casing.
98. Bent of extractor lever for “80.”
99. Lugs on side levers for “95.”
100. Bush, axis, side levers.
101. Pin, split, keeper, bush, axis, side levers.
102. Horns of extractor.
102A. Grooves in extractor for “79.”
103. Shoulders of extractor for “87.”
104. Grooves in extractor for side plate springs.
105. Hole in extractor for “90.”
106. Recess in extractor for “83.”
107. Pin, axis, trigger.
108. Pin, axis, tumbler.
109. Key of pin, axis, tumbler.
110. Projection on firing pin for “89.”
111. Lever, top, feed block.
112. Lever, bottom, feed block.
113. Pins, split, fixing, top and bottom levers, feed block.
114. Stud of top lever for feed block slide.
114A. Slide, feed block.
115. Pawl, top, feed block, rear.
115A. Thumb grips of “115” and “116.”
116. Pawl, top, feed block, front.
117. Spring, top pawls, feed block.
118. Pawls, bottom, feed block (pair).
119. Pin, axis, bottom pawl, feed block.
120. Finger plate of bottom pawls, feed block.
121. Spring, bottom pawls, feed block.
122. Cup, muzzle attachment.
123. Casing, outer, muzzle attachment.
124. Cone, front, muzzle attachment.
125. Gland, muzzle attachment.
126. Screw, clamping, cup, muzzle attachment.
127. Disc, muzzle attachment.
128. Vent, bullet, muzzle attachment.
Plate IV.
VICKERS GUN.
Plate V.
VICKERS GUN.
VICKERS LIGHT MACHINE GUN.
The principal features are as in Maxim with the following
exceptions:—
Total weight, ready for firing, is 38½ lbs. (Maxim, 67 lbs.).
Length, width and depth slightly less than Maxim.
Barrel casing is of corrugated steel (affording greater cooling
surface).
Rear end of barrel—i.e., chamber—goes back into barrel casing,
thus greatly assisting cooling of barrel where it is most essential.
Foresight is blade pattern, with protector.
No ejector tube or spring, there being an opening at bottom of
breech casing through which empty cases fall. (Shutter requires to be
opened before commencing firing.)
Tangent sight is 2½ in. nearer rear end of breech casing and is U
pattern.
There is no buffer spring or resistance piece.
An elevating stop on outside of left-hand plate, this preventing the
bracket head of the mounting damaging the fusee spring box.
No stud for the shoulder piece.
Connecting rod has an adjusting nut and washers.
Crank handle revolves in the opposite direction to Maxim.
Lock is inverted and joined to connecting rod by an interrupted
flange.
Lock has no extractor spring, as cases fall off extractor when clear
of barrel.
Lock can be easily stripped with the hand screw which forms the
axis pin of the trigger bar lever.
Top pawls are made with finger pieces, and can be pressed down
by hand to allow belt to be released, having only one spring, which is
removable.
Fusee spring can be adjusted without removing box, as the vice pin
of screw is loose.
Fusee has a clutch fixture, and is easily removable.

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The Developmental Psychology of

Personal Identity Massimo Marraffa

Developmental Psychology: The Growth of Mind and

Theories of Developmental Psychology 6th Edition,

Hume on the Self and Personal Identity Dan O'Brien

Developmental Psychology, 2e (UK Higher Education

Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence –

What Matters in Survival: Personal Identity and other

The Psychology of Personal Growth and Better

Leibniz: General Inquiries on the Analysis of Notions

Ethics and Politics of the Self, by Daniele Lorenzini

Massimo Marraffa and

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

First published in Great Britain 2024

Copyright © Massimo Marraffa and Cristina Meini, 2024

Series design by Charlotte Daniels

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

ISBN: HB: 978-1-3503-6899-6

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

1 Setting the philosophical stage 1

A brief overview 179

Setting the philosophical stage

1. Objective and subjective identity

A person’s identity, in ordinary language, is in the first place that set of

dimension as well, by denoting the person in her concrete self-recognition, just

2. Locke’s anti-substantialist concept of personal identity

Locke begins his discussion of personal identity by distinguishing the concept

Thus, diachronic identity is no longer grounded on the old metaphysical and

Enormous is therefore the task Locke assigns to memory. In a passage with

According to Locke, personal identity consists of such work of constant

The maintenance of personal identity is therefore not spontaneous: it costs

3. A criticism of Kant’s theory of self-consciousness

A latah person, when his attention is attracted by the oscillating movement

Based on Shirokogoroff ’s (1935) study of Tungus shamanism, De Martino

Everything happens as if a presence that is fragile, non-guaranteed, labile,

Most importantly, we find an intensive focus on this kind of experience today in

even the supreme principle of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness

continuously under construction by a human organism and constantly exposed

4. The Jamesian I as a process of selfing

In Chapter 10 of Principles of Psychology (1890), James provides the first conscious

as soon as we try for once to understand ourselves, and to do so by turning

5. Object consciousness versus self-consciousness

rats had constructed complex representational states in their nervous system

The clear distinction between object consciousness and self-consciousness

According to first-order representational theories, phenomenal

Conscious mental states – experiences, in particular – are states that we

The psychological toolkit

First: as also some neo-Piagetian psychologists recognized (the most famous

A philosophical and methodological reflection on the hypotheses and data

1. The Jamesian self in the framework

James’ theory of subjective identity falls within the framework of Darwinian

individual conceived as a concrete organism intent on pursuing its goals (see

2. From the Hobbesian individual to the mother–child dyad

2.1. First, the unconscious, then consciousness

toward oneself ’ (Eagle 2011, 130). Within this framework, consciousness is no

2.2. The critique of the Hobbes–Freud scheme

Hobbes’ pessimistic anthropology, was laid down by Freud as the foundation

without competitiveness and no competitiveness without cooperation. This is a

2.3. The contextualistic and systemic approach in