The child is a realist, since he supposes thought to be inseparable from its object, names from things named, and dreams to be external. His realism consists in a spontaneous and immediate tendancy to confuse the sign and the thing signified, internal and external, and the psychical and the physical.

The results of this realism are twofold. Firstly, the limits the child draws between the self and the external world are much less rigid than our own; secondly, the realism is further extended by 'participations' and spontaneous ideas of a magical nature. ...

It is possible to feel acutely the results of a mental process (logical reasoning or affective reasoning) without knowing how such a result came about. This is precisely the case with the child and is what is meant when the child's 'intuition' is spoken of; a true perception of the contents of consciousness but no knowledge of how these contents were acquired, such is the paradox of this 'intuition.'

This paradox is closely related to the following facts. The child may be aware of the same contents of though as ourselves but he locates them elsewhere. He situates in the world or in others what we seat within ourselves, and he situates in himself what we place in others. In this problem of the child's consciousness of self, and it is through not stating it clearly that what is in fact exceedingly complex is made to appear simple.  It is indeed possible to suppose a mind extremely sensitive to the least stirrings of the affective life, a keen observer of the niceties of language, customs and conduct in general, yet hardly conscious of his own self, since he systematically treats each of his thoughts as objective and every feeling as common to all. The consciousness of self arises in fact from the dissociation of reality as conceived by the primitive mind and not from association of particular contents. That the child shows a keen interest in himself, a logical, and no doubt a moral, egocentricity, does not prove that he is conscious of his self, but suggests, on the contrary, that he confuses his self with the universe, in other words that he is unconscious of his self. This is what we shall attempt to prove. ...

We shall use the term 'magic' for the use the individual believes he can make of such participation to modify reality. All magic supposes a participation, but the reverse is not true. ...

Narcissism, that is to say absolute egocentricity, certainly gives rise to magical conviction, but only in so far as it implies the absence of consciousness of self. The term 'solipsism' has been used in connection with infants: but the real solipsist does not feel that he is alone, and connot know his self for the simple reason that we only feel ourselves to be alone after others have left us and that he who has never had the idea of a possible plurality cannot have in the least degree the feeling of his individuality. Thus the solipsist probably feels himself identical with the images he perceives; he has no consciousness of his self, he is the world. We may speak of narcissim and maintain that the infant regards everything in terms of his own pleasure, but on condition that we remember that narcissism is accompanied by the most complete realism, in the sense that the infant can make no distinction between a self that commands and a not-self that obeys.

Boldface emphasis added.

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