Problems of Early Infancy1

In his introductory remarks John Benjamin gave a brief systematic survey of various areas of psychoanalytic research which differed in methods as well as in goals. He stressed the need for testing and expanding the genetic propositions of psychoanalysis by psychoanalytically illuminated longitudinal observations of infants and children. The present panel, he stated, would deal with the restricted but highly important and necessary area of what can and what cannot be meaningfully predicted from very early neonatal observations.

In two papers entitled "Neonates" and "The Same Children in the Second Year, " Katherine M. Wolf presented material from a current research program that is being carried out at the Child Study Center at Yale University. In general these are longitudinal studies on child behavior beginning at the prenatal stage. The specific aspect which she presented was the observation of the neonate with the view, if possible, of delineating forms or patterns of behavior in the individual child at birth or shortly after which would have more or less predictive value in respect to the child's later responses and personality development.

Wolf opened her discussion of individuals at birth by emphasizing that she was not seeking the answer to the old controversy of constitution vs. environment, though naturally speculation about the relative importance of these factors was inevitable by the very nature of the age level with which she was working and the type of behavioral observations that were being made. She indicated that she and her co-workers differed from Fries' contributions because they did not feel that selection of differences in motor behavior offered the most promise for the establishment of reliable predictive measures. She felt that differences in activity were fated to be largely descriptive and felt it was probably false to assume that similar behavior or different levels of development meant the same thing.

In contrast Wolf outlined her aims