‘I can because you can’: the inter-subjective nature of self-agency

Abstract

The author uses the observation of a single baby over two years to trace the development of agency and the subsequent emergence of a subjective sense of self-agency in the child. Drawing on both Jungian and developmental literature, including Knox, Stern, Gergely and Watson and Fonagy et al., the paper offers a detailed description of the importance of the other in the achievement of a robust sense of self-agency in the infant.

Keywords:

• agency
• self-agency
• inter-subjective
• development
• Jean Knox
• unconscious

Acknowledgements

I am profoundly grateful to Daisy's family for letting me into their lives and for their generous permission to publish this paper. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the observation seminar group, my external reader Marguerite Reid, and especially our infant observation tutor Joanna Tucker, Jungian Analytical Psychotherapist and former Clinical Director of the Oxford Parent-Infant Project (www.oxpip.org.uk). This intense, thoughtful and rich experience was a crucial part of my own development. The title of this paper should perhaps have been: I could not have done it without you.