as role model and life instructor has had the effect of obliging the child to fall back on his own devices to construct a persona and mode of behavior that he could be confident are satisfactory. Thus, as the text says, overwhelmed by evidence that he is loved, he must above all (and only) please (32). The trouble with that, however, is that different constituencies are pleased in different ways and by different things, which means the boy must decode constituency priorities in order to select which mode of behavior constitutes a good decision.
It is from that standpoint that Sartre explains how he understood his position in the world, showing himself as both tenacious of the profound egocentricity of childhood and in a position of realizing that the adults in his family are able to have uninterrogated authority over him: "I regard society as a strict hierarc
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