The primacy of the relationship

There is an I-you dialogue that we all feel is indispensable to preserve our psychological integrity. It is connected with inner dialogue and with the "verbal Self", the most "mature" organisation of personality, according to Stern's definition, the one that enables us to recognise ourselves in certain behaviours and disown ourselves in others, creating what we commonly call "free choice". Consciousness arises at the primary level with the appearance of a hallucinatory presence, described by Edelman at the level of vertebrate animals as the "remembered present". When verbal symbols replace the direct evocation of the scenes of the primary consciousness, we move away from the lived experience and run the risk of alienation, but at the same time we have access to the possibility of a higher integration.