The child is wholly egoistic, experiencing its needs intensely and striving ruthlessly to satisfy them, particularly against its rivals – other children, but in the first instance its own siblings. However, we do not call the child ‘bad’ because of that; we call it ‘naughty’. It is not responsible for its misdeeds, either before our judgement or before the law. And rightly so; because even within phases of existence that we include within childhood we can expect the little egoist to show stirrings of altruism and morality
