Permanenze e piccole-grandi "rivoluzioni" nella prima infanzia. Lo sguardo pedagogico e psicologico sulla genesi del primo senso di sé

Abstract

The essay reiterates the unique nature of early infancy in personality building, focusing attention on what constitutes those essential steps in creating the initial sense of the “self”, a vital component in a prolonged process of “permanent effect” identity formation along that path leading to the personal self-realization. The paper appears against a background touching upon the most advanced research and the bases of those theories – starting from Rousseau’s “discovery of infancy” – which allow us to grasp the revelations of those personology traits in the throes of their creation through the fundamental affection in family relations which lay the foundations of trust, autonomy and self- esteem. In the pre-school environment the sense of differentiation of the “self” develops in like, if not clearer, manner – along with a sharing-oriented solidarity, i.e. the first awareness of standard empathy and joy which leads to the feeling of belonging. It is that very pedagogic and psychological insight which may direct the overcoming of educationally inappropriate attitudes, which, on the one hand, may allow us to look beyond determinism, or, on the other, the carelessness of other wholly reductionist theories, to transform neurophysiological and biochemical data which flank human development on exceptional educational occasions which stand as the cornerstone of personality in its own specificity ... forever one.