The I

About this poem

Scholarly psychological research in Early Child Development suggests that the development of the human personality is not instantiated at birth, but is a life-long process that continues throughout the cycles of one’s life in interaction with the environment and with other personalities in the environment. Specifically, scholarly psychological research in Early Child Development suggests that at around the age of 18 months children of all cultures and all native languages begin to refer to themselves by name only, without deployment of the personal pronoun I (das ich). This subjective personal pronoun seems to develop later, into the second year of life, as the human personality truly begins to form and take hold as a social individual, at which critical point of ego formation the child is now an individual ego called by name I. This I begins to realize that he or she is a person with separate ideas and with separate constructions of beliefs. The I begins to assert itself. The persona begins to be established. The poem concludes with the provocative question: “Wherefore art thou, I?” This intriguing question recalls Shakespeare’s character Juliet, in the play of Romeo and Juliet, painfully enquiring whether her paramour Romeo is a member of the enemy Montague clan. Likewise, the question that ends this poem enquirers rhetorically where does, or where should the I of the psyche truly belong. more »