Oldal 84 [84]
FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE BONDIAN ÁPPROACH
Leary and Tangney offer a useful collection of diverse theories”** Experiments
clearly show that even babies in their mothers womb react to impulses that
reach them?” but there is no clear scientific method of telling how they
experience their being. Nevertheless, it is important to see if there are other
theories that support Bond’s concept of the monad state.
After decades of research in this field Daniel N. Stern tried to describe
what it might feel like to be a baby in the Diary of a Baby. The following quote
is from the chapter about a six-week-old baby.
[...] [P]retend that there is no you to stand outside the weather and watch it happen.
You are part of the weatherscape. The prevailing mood and force can come from
inside you and shape or color everything you see outside. Or, they can start outside
and resonate inside you. In fact, the distinction between inside and outside is still
vague: both may seem to influence one another directly, almost flow freely one into
the other."
Stern claims that in the first two months of a new-borns life there is an
"emergent self"! and the core self appears in the next developmental phase.
Stern’s description connects strongly with Bond’s account of this stage.
Bond does not offer an exact period for what he calls the monad state but
describes it in detail. He claims that two basic sensations govern the monad’s
world, these are pain and pleasure; the pain of hunger, discomfort, need and
the pleasure of contentment, the fulfilment of these basic needs. As far as
we can imagine the neonate experiences them as extremes that invoke its
reactions and are its world. “It is a passionate world of dread, rage and joy”,*”
as Bond terms it. Stern’s description of a six-week-old babies hunger seems
to support Bond’s ideas. He says that for a new-born “hunger is a powerful
experience, a motivation, a drive. It sweeps through an infant’s nervous
system like a storm, disrupting whatever was going on before and temporarily
disorganizing behavior [sic] and experience”.
Antonio Damasio uses the term protoself to distinguish this earliest phase
of self-development.*™ He claims “primordial feelings are not only the first
images generated by the brain but also immediate manifestations of sentience.
298 Mark R. Leary — June Price Tangney (eds.): Handbook of Self and Identity, 2"! edn., London,
The Guilford Press, 2012.
Varga Katalin — Suhai Gabor: Sziilés és születés: Lélektanon innen és túl, Budapest, Pólya
Kiadó, 2010.
300 Daniel N. Stern: Diary of a Baby, New York, Basic Books, 1990, 14.
301 Daniel N. Stern: The Interpersonal World of the Infant, London, Karnac Books, 1998, 11.
302 Bond: Freedom and Drama, 207.
303 Stern: Diary ofa Baby, 32.
304 Antonio Damasio: Selfcomes to mind: constructing the conscious brain, New York, Pantheon
Books, 2010, 26.
299
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