Caregiver-self

The caregiver-self is one of the circles by which a self expands to take in others, and it is patterned on the very first relationships a person ever forms: those of a baby or small child with its home and its caregivers. When a self expands, it can do so by replicating that original template, drawing new people and things into the same shape as the infant's bond with those who cared for it. Marsh flags the risk in the qualifier: particularly if that circle has created an endogroup. The earliest caregiving bond is a natural and necessary form of connection, but when the caregiver-self hardens into an endogroup, it becomes a bounded, inward-facing unit defined against outsiders, and the warmth of the original relationship is turned into the loyalty-and-exclusion structure her framework criticizes.

Developmental psychology, especially attachment theory after Bowlby, treats the early bond between child and caregiver as the template for later relationships, which is the pattern Marsh draws on. Her distinctive move is to fold that template into her account of the self's circles of expansion and the endogroup, marking the point at which a caregiving bond can become an exclusionary group.