The Experience of Becoming a Person (Man’s Search for Himself)

To undertake this “venture of becoming aware of ourselves,” and to discover the sources of inner strength and security which are the rewards of such a venture, let us start at the beginning by asking, What is this person, this sense of selfhood we seek? A few years ago a psychologist procured a baby chimpanzee the same age as his infant son. In order to do an experiment, such as is the wont of these men, he raised the baby chimp and baby human being in his household together. For the first few months they developed at very much the same speed, playing together and showing very little difference. But after a dozen months or so, a change began to occur in the development of the little human baby, and from then on there was a great difference between him and the chimp. This is what we would expect. For there is very little difference between the human being and any mammal baby from the time of the original unity of the fetus in the womb of its mother, through the beginning of the beating of its own heart, then its ejection as an infant from the womb at birth, the commencing of its own breathing and the first protected months of life. But around the age of two, more or less, there appears in the human being the most radical and important emergence so far in evolution, namely his consciousness of himself.

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Related posts:

1. Will It Fly Summary (7/10)
2. Modern Man in Search of a Soul Summary (8/10)
3. Part 2: Stir Up The Transgressive and Taboo (The Art of Seduction)
4. Chapter 19: And They Lived Happily Every After (Sapiens)