2 - Ontogenesis of the perceived self

Summary

To perceive the world is to coperceive oneself.

J. J. Gibson

“The stage is set, enter the hero of the play… We take a new step, long deferred and often anticipated, and introduce the Ego” (Koffka, 1935, p. 319). So begins the second half of a book that played an important role in my early education as a psychologist. This was Kurt Koffka's way of introducing his treatment of action. The ego he considered a field object, segregated from other objects, and also the “executive” in control of behavior.

There are many other ways of discussing the ego (see Neisser, 1988). I am going to refer to the “self,” as Neisser did, rather than the ego, because the term carries less literary and moral baggage. My aim is to show the way in which the self is rooted in perception. “You” are an object in a world of other objects, and I perceive you as such. So, indeed, am “I,” and just as surely I perceive myself as an object in the same world of things and events that I locate you in.