As the pattern system which will characterize the personality of  a child evolves,  the brain system of the child experiences evidence of patterns driving the actions of significant others. Bundles of patterns originating with recognition of patterns of another (let’s say Mom),  then become ’imbedded’ and are readily available as ‘potential templates for action.

We see the operation of this frequently. Folks report, “I’m just like my mother” or ”I swore I’d never say that to my child but it just came out of my mouth”.

In Freudian terms, this has been construed as evidence of the presence of ‘an introject’, ‘internalized’, quite likely as a result of ‘identification with one or another parent as part and parcel of some kind of movement through an Oedipal conflict’.

Given what we now know, we can say that ‘templates for action’ assemble themselves in real time to assist us as we negotiate the moments of our lives. It would appear that our brain recognizes and records, patterns, functional in a context (e.g. as we might relate to our life partners or children.) Subsequently, during the course of our lives, as we negotiate those contexts in our own lives, recorded patterns, the system deems useful, emerge as, in effect, a resource to assist us.