Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:27:51.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the origins of self and the case of autism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

R. Peter Hobson
R. Peter Hobson*
Affiliation:
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London
*
Address correspondence to: R. P. Hobson, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines what it means to have a self. My focus is on the essential components of self-experience, the kind of psychological architecture required to construct a self, rather than on the configurations or qualities of individual “selves.” I adopt a developmental perspective and indicate how early childhood autism may afford unique insights into the role of perceptual-affective and interpersonal experience in determining the normal child's developing awareness of self.

Type
Research Article
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , April 1990 , pp. 163 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aitken, S. (1977). Psychological sex differentiation as related to the emergence of a self-concept in infancy. Honors thesis, Edinburgh University.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association (1987). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. rev.) [DSM-III-R]. Washington, DC: APA.Google Scholar
Amsterdam, B. (1972). Mirror self-image reactions before age two. Developmental Psychobiology, 5, 297–305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bahrick, L. E., & Watson, J. S. (1985). Detection of intermodal proprioceptive-visual contingency as a potential basis of self-perception in infancy. Developmental Psychology, 21, 963–973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, J. M. (1902). Social and ethical interpretations in mental development. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? Cognition, 21, 37–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1986). Mechanical, behavioural and intentional understanding of picture stories in autistic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 113–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartak, L., & Rutter, M. (1974). The use of personal pronouns by autistic children. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 4, 217–222.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartak, L., Rutter, M., & Cox, A. (1975). A comparative study of infantile autism and specific developmental receptive language disorder: I. The children. British Journal of Psychiatry, 126, 127–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartolucci, G., & Albers, R. J. (1974). Deictic categories in the language of autistic children. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 4, 131–141.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bemporad, J. R. (1979). Adult recollections of a formerly autistic child. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 9, 179–197.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bergman, A. (1980). Ours, yours, mine. In Lax, R., Bach, S., & Burland, J. A. (Eds.), Rapprochement: The critical subphase of separation-individuation (pp. 199–216). New York: Aronson.Google Scholar
Bosch, G. (1970). Infantile autism (Jordan, D. and Jordan, I., Trans.). New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bower, T. G. R., Broughton, J. M., & Moore, M. K. (1970). Infant responses to approaching objects: An indicator of response to distal variables. Perception and Psychophysics, 9, 193–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bretherton, I., McNew, S., & Beeghly-Smith, M. (1981). Early person knowledge as expressed in gestural and verbal communication: When do infants acquire a “theory of mind”? In Lamb, M. E. & Sherrod, L. R. (Eds.), Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations (pp. 333–373). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brooks, J., & Lewis, M. (1976). Infants' responses to strangers: Midget, adult and child. Child Development, 47, 323–332.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brooks-Gunn, J., & Lewis, M. (1978). Early social knowledge: The development of knowledge about others. In McGurk, H. (Ed.), Issues in childhood social development (pp. 79–106). London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. S. (1975). From communication to language-A psychological perspective. Cognition, 3, 255–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou (2nd ed.) (Smith, R. G., Trans.). Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.Google Scholar
Butterworth, G. (in press). Self perception in infancy. In Cicchetti, D. & Beeghly, M. (Eds.), The self in transition: Infancy to childhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Butterworth, G. E., & Cicchetti, D. (1978). Visual calibration of posture in normal and motor retarded Down's syndrome infants. Perception, 7, 513–525.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Butterworth, G. E., & Hicks, L. (1977). Visual proprioception and postural stability in infancy: A developmental study. Perception, 6, 255–262.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charney, R. (1980). Speech roles and the development of personal pronouns. Journal of Child Language, 7, 509–528.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charney, R. (1981). Pronoun errors in autistic children: Support for a social explanation. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 15, 39–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiat, S. (1981). Context-specificity and generalization in the acquisition of pronominal distinctions. Journal of Child Language, 8, 75–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chiat, S. (1982). If I were you and you were me: The analysis of pronouns in a pronoun-reversing child. Journal of Child Language, 9, 359–379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cicchetti, D. (1984). The emergence of developmental psychopathology. Child Development, 55, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cicchetti, D., & Beeghly, M. (in press). Perspectives on the study of the self in transition. In Cicchetti, D. & Beeghly, M. (Eds.), The self in transition: Infancy to childhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cicchetti, D., Beeghly, M., Carlson, V., & Toth, S. (in press). The emergence of the self in atypical populations. In Cicchetti, D. & Beeghly, M. (Eds.), The self in transition: Infancy to childhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1978). From gesture to word: On the natural history of deixis in language acquisition. In Bruner, J. S. & Garton, A. (Eds.), Human growth and development (pp. 85–120). Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. J. (1980). The pathology of the self in primary childhood autism and Gilles de la Tourette syndrome. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 3, 383–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Curcio, F. (1978). Sensorimotor functioning and communication in mute autistic children. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 8, 281–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Damon, W., & Hart, D. (1982). The development of self-understanding from infancy through adolescence. Child Development, 53, 841–864.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damon, W., & Hart, D. (1988). Self-understanding in childhood and adolescence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, G., & Adams, A. (1984). Imitation and social responsiveness in autistic children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 12, 209–226.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawson, G., & McKissick, F. C. (1984). Self-recognition in autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 14, 383–394.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeMyer, M. K., Alpern, G. D., Barton, S., DeMyer, W. E., Churchill, D. W., Hingtgen, J. N., Bryson, C. Q., Pontius, W., & Kimberlin, C. (1972). Imitation in autistic, early schizophrenic, and non-psychotic subnormal children. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 2, 264–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Villiers, P. A., & de Villiers, J. G. (1974). On this, that, and the other: Nonegocentrism in very young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 18, 438–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, M. (1965). A critical evaluation of the ontogeny of human sexual behavior. Quarterly Review of Biology, 40, 147–175.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Emde, R. N. (1983). The prerepresentational self and its affective core. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 38, 165–191.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fagan, J. F. (1972). Infants' recognition memory for faces. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 14, 453–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fay, W. H. (1979). Personal pronouns and the autistic child. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 9, 247–260.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feinman, S. (1982). Social referencing in infancy. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 28, 445–470.Google Scholar
Field, T. M., Woodson, R., Greenberg, R., & Cohen, D. (1982). Discrimination and imitation of facial expressions by neonates. Science, 218, 179–181.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Freud, S. (1925). Negation. In Strachey, J. (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. XIX, pp. 233–239). London: Hogarth.Google Scholar
Frye, D., Rawling, P., Moore, C., & Myers, I. (1983). Object-person discrimination and communication at 3 and 10 months. Developmental Psychology, 19, 303–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallup, G. G. (1982). Self-awareness and the emergence of mind in primates. American Journal of Primatology, 2, 237–248.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
Glover, J. (1988). I. The philosophy and psychology of personal identity. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Gordon, C., & Gergen, K. J. (1968). The self in social interaction. Volume I: Classic and contemporary perspectives. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J. R., & Mitchell, S. A. (1983). Object relations in psychoanalytic theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamlyn, D. W. (1974). Person-perception and our understanding of others. In Mischel, T. (Ed.), Understanding other persons (pp. 1–36). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hampshire, S. (1976). Feeling and expression. In Glover, J. (Ed.), The philosophy of mind (pp. 73–83). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1960)Google Scholar
Harding, C. G., & Golinkoff, R. M. (1979). The origins of intentional vocalizations in prelinguistic infants. Child Development, 50, 33–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harter, S. (1983). Developmental perspectives on the self-system. In Mussen, P. H. (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology, Volume IV (Vol. Ed. Hetherington, E. M.) (pp. 275–385). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Hay, D. F., Stimson, C. A., & Castle, J. (in press). A meeting of minds in infancy: Imitation and desire. In Frye, D. & Moore, C. (Eds.), Children's theories of mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (1982). The autistic child's concept of persons. In Park, D. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1981 international conference on autism.Boston, U.S.A. (pp. 97–102). Washington, DC: National Society for Children and Adults with Autism.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (1983a). Origins of the personal relation, and the strange case of autism. Paper presented to the Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry, May.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (1983b). The autistic child's recognition of age-related features of people, animals and things. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 343–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (1984). Early childhood autism and the question of egocentrism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 14, 85–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobson, R. P. (1986a). The autistic child's appraisal of expressions of emotion. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27, 321–342.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobson, R. P. (1986b). The autistic child's appraisal of expressions of emotion: A further study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27, 671–680.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobson, R. P. (1987). The autistic child's recognition of age- and sex-related characteristics of people. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 17, 63–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobson, R. P. (1989a). On sharing experiences. Development and Psychopathology, 1, 197–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (1989b). Beyond cognition: A theory of autism. In Dawson, G. (Ed.), Autism: Nature, diagnosis, and treatment (pp. 22–48). New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (1990). On acquiring knowledge about people and the capacity to pretend: Response to Leslie. Psychological Review, 97, 114–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobson, R. P. (in press-a). Concerning knowledge of mental states. British Journal of Medical Psychology.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P. (in press-b). On psychoanalytic approaches to autism. American Journal of Ortho-psychiatry.Google Scholar
Hobson, R. P., & Lee, A. (1990). Emotion-related and abstract concepts in autistic people: Evidence from the British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 19, 601–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, R. P., Ouston, J., & Lee, A. (1988a). What's in a face? The case of autism. British Journal of Psychology, 79, 441–453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobson, R. P., Ouston, J., & Lee, A. (1988b). Emotion recognition in autism: coordinating faces and voices. Psychological Medicine, 18, 911–923.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobson, R. P., Ouston, J., & Lee, A. (1989). Naming emotion in faces and voices: Abilities and disabilities in autism and mental retardation. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 7, 237–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hume, D. (1739/1888). A treatise of human nature (Selby-Bigge, L. A., Ed.). Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. 1). New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Jordan, R. R. (1989). An experimental comparison of the understanding and use of speaker-addressee personal pronouns in autistic children. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 24, 169–179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kagan, J. (1982). The emergence of self. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 23, 363–381.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child, 2, 217–250.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1929). Immanuel Kant's critique of pure reason (Smith, N. Kemp, Trans.). London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kaye, K. (1982). The mental and social life of babies. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Kernberg, O. F. (1982). Self, ego, affects, and drives. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 30, 893–917.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kitchener, R. F. (1986). Piaget's theory of knowledge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kujawski, J. H. (1984). Origins of gender identity. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Landry, S. H., & Loveland, K. A. (1988). Communication behaviors in autism and developmental language delay. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 29, 621–634.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Langdell, T. (1981). Face perception: An approach to the study of autism. PhD Thesis, University College, London.Google Scholar
Lee, D., & Aronson, E. (1974). Visual proprioceptive control of standing in human infants. Perception and Psychophysics, 15, 529–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1988). Autistic children's understanding of seeing, knowing and believing. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 315–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, M., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1979). Social cognition and the acquisition of self. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loveland, K. A. (1984). Learning about points of view: Spatial perspective and the acquisition of “I/you.” Journal of Child Language, 11, 535–556.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loveland, K. A. (1986). Discovering the affordances of a reflecting surface. Developmental Review, 6, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loveland, K. A., & Landry, S. H. (1986). Joint attention and language in autism and developmental language delay. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 16, 335–349.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Macmurray, J. (1961). Persons in relation. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
McGinn, C. (1983). The subjective view. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Mahler, M. S. (1968). On human symbiosis and the vicissitudes of individuation: Infantile psychosis. New York: International Universities Press.Google Scholar
Mans, L., Cicchetti, D., & Sroufe, L. A. (1978). Mirror reactions of Down's syndrome infants and toddlers: Cognitive underpinnings of self-recognition. Child Development, 49, 1247–1250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society (Morris, C. W., Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N., & Borton, R. W. (1979). Intermodal matching by human neonates. Nature, 282, 403–404.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The child's relations with others (Cobb, W., trans.) In Merleau-Ponty, M., The primacy of perception (pp. 96–155). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, C. M., & Messer, D. J. (1977). Mothers, infants and pointing: A study of gesture. In Schaffer, H. R. (Ed.), Studies in mother-infant interaction (pp. 325–354). London: Academic.Google Scholar
Murray, L., & Trevarthen, C. (1985). Emotional regulation of interactions between two-month-olds and their mothers. In Field, T. M. & Fox, N. A. (Eds.), Social perception in infants (pp. 177–197). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Nagel, T. (1979). Mortal questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Neisser, U. (1988). Five kinds of self-knowledge. Philosophical Psychology, 1, 35–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neuman, C. J., & Hill, S. D. (1978). Self-recognition and stimulus preference in autistic children. Developmental Psychobiology, 11, 571–578.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ricks, D. M. (1975). Vocal communication in pre-verbal normal and autistic children. In O'Connor, N. (Ed.), Language, cognitive deficits, and retardation (pp. 75–80). London: Butterworths.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutter, M., & Garmezy, N. (1983). Developmental psychopathology. In Mussen, P. H. (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology, Volume IV (Vol. Ed. Hetherington, E. M.) (pp. 775–911). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Rutter, M., & Schopler, E. (1987). Autism and pervasive developmental disorders: Concepts and diagnostic issues. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 17, 159–186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schaffer, H. R. (1984). The child's entry into a social world. London: Academic.Google Scholar
Scheler, M. (1954). The nature of sympathy (Heath, P., Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Sharpless, E. A. (1985). Identity formation as reflected in the acquisition of personal pronouns. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 33, 861–885.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sigman, M., Mundy, P., Sherman, T., & Ungerer, J. (1986). Social interactions of autistic, mentally retarded and normal children and their caregivers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27, 647–656.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Silberg, J. L. (1978). The development of pronoun usage in the psychotic child. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 8, 413–425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simmons, J. Q., & Baltaxe, C. (1975). Language patterns of adolescent autistics. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 5, 333–351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sorce, J. E., Emde, R. N., Campos, J., & Klinnert, M. D. (1985). Maternal emotional signaling: Its effect on the visual cliff behavior of 1-year-olds. Developmental Psychology, 21, 195–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spiker, D., & Ricks, M. (1984). Visual self-recognition in autistic children: Developmental relationships. Child Development, 55, 214–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spitz, R. A. (1957). No and yes—On the genesis of human communication. New York: International Universities Press.Google Scholar
St. Clair, M. (1986). Object relations and self psychology: An introduction. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.Google Scholar
Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Strawson, P. F. (1962). Persons. In Chappell, V. C. (Ed.), The philosophy of mind (pp. 127–146). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (Original work published 1958)Google Scholar
Suls, J. (1982). Psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Sylvester-Bradley, B. (1985). Failure to distinguish between people and things in early infancy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 3, 281–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tager-Flusberg, H. (1989). An analysis of discourse ability and internal state lexicons in a longitudinal study of autistic children. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Kansas City.Google Scholar
Trevarthen, C., & Hubley, P. (1978). Secondary inter-subjectivity: Confidence, confiding and acts of meaning in the first year. In Lock, A. (Ed.), Action, gesture and symbol: The emergence of language (pp. 183–229). London: Academic.Google Scholar
Tustin, F. (1981). Autistic states in children. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Volkmar, F. R., & Cohen, D. J. (1985). The experience of infantile autism: A first-person account by Tony W. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 15, 47–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weeks, S. J., & Hobson, R. P. (1987). The salience of facial expression for autistic children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 28, 137–152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Werner, H. (1948). Comparative psychology of mental development. Chicago: Follett.Google Scholar
Wetherby, A. M., & Gaines, B. H. (1982). Cognition and language development in autism. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 47, 63–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wetherby, A. M., & Prutting, C. A. (1984). Profiles of communicative and cognitive-social abilities in autistic children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 27, 364–377.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Remarks on the philosophy of psychology (Vol. 1) (Anscombe, G. E. M., Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., & King, R. A. (1979). Child rearing and children's prosocial initiations toward victims of distress. Child Development, 50, 319–330.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed