The Process of Constructing the Self and Its Relation to Psychotherapy

Thus, the first 4-6 years of life are a period of increasing refinement of strategy to developmental context as maturation makes new distinctions perceptible and new response patterns possible. With their maturing capacities, children construct contextually-adapted strategies for regulating the protective function of caregivers. This progressively increases the specificity of children’s adaptation to unique aspects of their developmental contexts. The school years: variability and integration or rigidity and distortion. Once language becomes possible and motor competence permits children to explore widely from their caregivers, children begin to establish additional attachment relationships, for example, with grandmothers and daycare providers. Entry to the wider context of schools and social organizations provides children with substitute attachment figures and exposes them to others’ strategies and the occasions for using those strategies. This facilitates the construction of new strategies, each suited to certain circumstances or relationships. Children begin to integrate these multiple strategies into a self that is internally coherent while, nevertheless, varying strategically from one occasion to another and from one relationship to another. In addition, school-aged children are expected to explain their behavior, especially when they misbehave. Doing so requires children to become aware of and examine their multiple dispositional representations and to understand which motivated their behavior in any given instance. Some children discover, however, that honesty is not acceptable. These children learn to construct adult-pleasing, but false, explanations for their behavior. This is false cognition and it forms the basis for organizing a new strategy: the punitive/seductive C5-6 strategy. Children using this strategy integrate the ability to deceive others regarding their intentions into a new form of coercion in which deception is used to blackmail or seduce others into relationships. This strategy typifies various forms of coercive relationship from bully victim pairs, to gang activity, to couple violence. Adolescence and adulthood: sexuality and integration. Following the second major period of neurological maturational, puberty, adolescents begin to integrate emerging reproductive strategies into their attachment strategies for selecting and regulating relationships. In addition, the transition from an egocentric, protection-seeking form of relationship to a reciprocal exchange of perspective-taking, protection, and comfort develops in couple relationships. With the birth of children, the self is transformed yet again into a protective attachment figure for an attached child. Functioning successfully as a parental attachment figure requires substantial awareness of one’s own motivations, competence at regulating one’s own behavior, and flexibility of strategy (Crittenden, Lang, Partridge, & Claussen, 2000).