Infantile grandiosity

A number of psychoanalysts writing about infant development assume that infants imagine themselves to be all powerful as they are responsible for creating the care taking that they experience.  Other analysts believe that their picture of themselves as powerful is created to protect them against their sense of helplessness and vulnerability.  In either case, caregiving that does not allow them the illusion of being in control is considered to make them vulnerable to a persistence of this unrealistically grand image. 

See Narcissism, Psychoanalysis, Vulnerability