The self ‐ the global factor of emotional maturity

Abstract

The road to emotional maturity involves the integration of various aspects of personality into the self. The intra‐ and interpersonal aspects are dealt with from different standpoints (Freud, James, Gardner and others), the emotional aspect being seen not as the opposite of the intellectual, but as complementary to it in the child's and adult's personalities. The self contains everything that has passed through consciousness; it is the most important element of consciousness. Thanks to drives for knowing, for feeling, for creating, which are always active, we achieve a self which is more than the sum of its components and becomes a global factor in our personality. This global factor is the difference between the idiot savant and the creative, actualizing, gifted personality.