First Moments of Self-awareness in Childhood

This thought-provoking volume explores the phenomenon of childhood experiences of sudden moments of self-awareness. Locating them as meaningful developmental events, it draws on, and is illustrated by, detailed analysis of individuals' narratives of inner experience and recollections of childhood.

Autorentext

Dolph Kohnstamm is Professor Emeritus in Developmental Psychology, Leiden University, Netherlands. He is the author of works including Parental Descriptions of Child Personality, Temperament in Context, and Jean Piaget, Children and the Class-Inclusion Problem.

Inhalt

1 The development of self-awareness

2 Sudden insight

3 Sudden self-awareness among authors

4 Awareness of being

5 I am I, and not someone else

6 I can sometimes put myself in someone else's shoes

7 Like I was looking at myself from the outside

8 This is my body, I am alive!

9 The firmament and the sunlight

10 Past times, from now to the end

11 Mirrors

12 Extraordinary experiences of joy

13 Other sudden insights

14 Sudden cognitive insights

15 A mind-wandering network

16 Coda