Egocentrism appears to us as a form of behavior intermediate between purely individual and socialized behavior.

We recall how, starting with purely practical and quasi-physiological groups, the child begins by elaborating subjective groups, then arrives at objective groups, and only then becomes capable of representative groups.

Reflective abstraction, however, is based not on individual actions but on coordinated actions.

Childish egocentrism is, in its essence, an inability to differentiate between the ego and the social environment.

On the one hand, there are individual actions such as throwing, pushing, touching, rubbing. It is these individual actions that give rise most of the time to abstraction from objects.

In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact.