Human Development

Integration

Description:
Psychoanalytically, [primary] integration is the process of bringing together the separate parts of the mind which takes place in the first five years of life, so that the child starts to see itself as a whole and distinct from the environment. [Secondary] integration is the coordination of individual components into unified and socialized action.
In general terms, integration is the process by which disparate units of behaviour are formed or coordinated into larger and more inclusive patterns, through conditioning, generalization of habit, and all associational processes.
1. Simple reflexes in which integration takes the form of a limited number of nerve cells functioning together because of some synaptic affinity between them. A hierarchy of levels (between the cell and the total personality) may be distinguished as produced by integration.
2. Conditioned reflexes, in which integration takes the form of substitution of associated stimuli for congenitally effective stimuli with the result that the individual performs innate acts to altered stimulus conditions.
3. Habits, namely integrated systems of conditioned responses, involving altered responses as well as an extended range of effective conditioning, leading to fairly stereotyped forms of response in the face of recurrent situations of a similar type.
4. Traits, resulting (at least in part) from the integration of specific habits expressing characteristic modes of adaptation of the individual to his surroundings.
5. Selves, integration of systems of traits that are coherent among themselves, although likely to vary in different situations.
6. Personality, the progressive final integration of all the systems of response that represent an individual's characteristic adjustment to his various environments.
7. Final perfect personality integration through which a completely unified personality emerges (this is considered to be a theoretical possibility).