Speculating on the basis of the data of unitive experiences in schizophrenia, Freud suggested that newborns are initially solipsistic and only gradually learn to recognize the externality of the perceptible world. The circularity of his argument escaped attention until advances in direct infant observation established that object relations are inborn. Clinical phenomena that were previously interpreted by reference to the theory of neonatal solipsism have since been reinterpreted in terms of unconscious fantasies of mother-infant fusion or merger. These fantasies occur ex hypothesi during the first two years of life. The replacement of Freud's theory of infants' general perception of reality with Jacobson's theory of infants' occasional fantasies about their mothers makes nonsense of the theory that unitive experiences are regressions.
Unitive experiences are incommensurate with their ostensible sources in infancy.
The transformation of concrete fantasies of being one with the maternal breast, for example, into a sense of oneness with all-being, presupposes a sophisticated process of generalization, metaphorization, abstraction, and so forth. Unitive experiences may instead be seen as creative inspirations that depend, at minimum, on the sublimation of unconscious merger fantasies. The earliest possible date for the origin of unitive thinking is likely the rapprochement phase, in the middle third of the second year of life, when the idea of the self originates and empathy, guilt, and reparation first make their appearance. Clinical observation of the nondifferentiation of self and loved objects in the deepest levels of the ego ideal suggest that unitive schemas are constituent functions of the oral superego. A detailed account of the development of unitive schemas is not presently possible.