The omnipotent self, a study in self-deception and self-cure

by Paul Bousfield

Now let us see what happens to this omnipotent little creature at birth. It goes through the probably painful process of having its position roughly changed and being thrust into an atmosphere which is cold and unusual to it. Moreover it has to make its first struggle for breath, its first effort to sustain existence. And in its struggle for breath it utters cries, which by experience it very soon finds to be magic sounds which enable it to fulfil its wishes. But of this, more later.

After its first rude awakening, let us once more see what happens. It is wrapped up in something warm; that is, it is returned to a semblance of the womb, by having something round it which keeps out the cold. It is gently rocked to and fro by the nurse or other attendant, and again the semblance of the previous rocking in the womb is returned to it. Crooning sounds are murmured over it, and the semblance is still more complete. It frequently draws its knees up somewhat if it is placed in such a position that it can do so with ease, and falls asleep. It has attained as nearly as possible once more the semblance of its pre-birth condition, where it has no cares, and is warm and comfortable again. And though it has become acquainted with effort, it is quite obvious that its feeling of omnipotence, if we may so term it for the moment, is hardly yet disturbed, and the world it has come into differs but slightly from the world which it has left; it is still a world in which the infant is the centre and ruler, in which its every want is attended to without an effort on its part, save that it may sometimes have to call attention to its wants by means of that magical cry which it soon learns how and when to use, and which acts in a truly magical manner in accomplishing the fulfilment of all its desires.

During the first few weeks of the infant’s life this delusion on the part of the child is largely kept up. Few people think there is any harm in attending to all a baby’s wants in the first month of its life. They do not think it could possibly be wrong to spoil it at that age, because its intellect has not developed. They forget entirely that its mental condition and attitude towards life, apart from actual thought, may inevitably be affected at this period. Hence, whenever the baby cries, it is not uncommonly rocked to sleep, or fed, or if it holds out its hand and shows its desire to possess anything, it is immediately allowed to possess it, and to play with it. It has to make but the faintest attempts to adjust itself to its environment, it has to face but the slightest reality; all its desires are immediately fulfilled, and kept in a condition of almost continual fulfilment. And it may remain for a considerable period as near being an omnipotent creature as it is possible for any living thing to be. Its omnipotence, however, is really a fallacy, or as I prefer to term it at a slightly later stage, a phantasy, for the world in which it lived before birth, which seemed to it as a world, was not really a world at all, but a very small and a very temporary abode, and the world in which it is living for the first few months after birth is again not really a world but a combination of extremely limited and carefully selected portions of the world, in which every attempt is made to disguise from it the realities of the actual world.

Again let us emphasise the fact that the chief effort that the infant has to make is the effort of crying. And it may learn very quickly that this is so all-powerful as to practically efface the unpleasant task of having to adjust itself to the realities of life. This process is carried on with slight modifications for many months. The infant has but to wave a magic wand, as it were, has but to emit a little magic noise from its mouth, and all the world it knows is set in motion to give it satisfaction and some semblance of its pre-birth omnipotence.

This cry which brings it gratification, if it has been really effective over a too-prolonged period, will tend to fix permanently in the child’s mind the fact that either weeping or making a magic noise with the mouth will always attain for it gratification. And although at a later stage the conscious mind will be obliged to accept a considerable amount of reality and to reject the idea of omnipotence, yet the unconscious mind will persist in the struggle and will make futile efforts to forget reality, to change reality into phantasy, and to regain its omnipotent state.

When a man uses expletives because some task of his has failed to result in success, he is really repeating the infant’s cry. He is really uttering a magic sound which his unconscious mind hopes may somehow remedy the failure. He has not definitely accepted the reality of failure as a commonplace hard fact of life at the moment at which he utters his expletive.

When a person weeps at some unpleasant happening or in anger at something which has touched his pride, exactly the same is taking place. He, or she, has failed to make a complete adaptation of himself to the facts and realities of life. He has obeyed the law of regression, to which I referred in a previous chapter, and has returned to the infantile method of expression, namely weeping, with the unconscious hope that a magic compensation will result; that instead of his having to adapt himself to the facts of life, the facts of life will somehow adapt themselves to his phantasy.

Hence, the first piece of advice that one must give to parents is that they should, from the earliest possible moment, train the infant to understand that the magic cries will not at once produce their expected result; and the first week in the infant’s life is all-important in this matter. The choosing of the nurse who has charge during that period should be done with great care, and what is required of her should be insisted on. Too great emphasis cannot be laid upon these points.

The child should be fed at regular and proper intervals, and should be kept warm. But if it cries, as it will do naturally, it should be left to itself to cry. It should not be picked up, rocked to sleep, given another meal nor petted. If it is left to cry, it will learn very rapidly and at the right period of its life that the sounds which it emits are not magical, and it will begin to adapt itself to the fact that it lives in a real world which has not been built solely and only for its own delight.

It is curious to note how regression, this instinct to return to the earlier mode of expression, to return apparently even to the pre-birth state, persists in the unconscious mind.