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The following description of the numerous aspects of the infant's developing personality highlights the interaction between a mother and her child and the repercussions on the child of the mother's pathology. The role played by the infant's innate endowment is considered in the appropriate sections.
Miss A. approached the Well-Baby Clinic very shortly after leaving the maternity unit with Daisy, her first-born child. She had been advised to come to us by a relative who had attended the Well-Baby Clinic regularly with her two children.
This unmarried mother was 40 at the time of Daisy's birth. She told us she had made a conscious decision to have a child, though she knew her partner did not favour the plan. She had two terminations prior to Daisy's birth.
Our knowledge of Miss A's background and experience in childhood remains sketchy, but during the fifteen consultations held in Daisy's first year, we gained some picture of her early life. Her father moved to England from Dublin in search of work prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. His fiancée joined him as soon as he was settled and Miss A was born a year after their marriage. She remained an only child. Her mother returned to Ireland with the baby when the bombing of London became severe and lived with the maternal grandparents. When her mother rejoined her father, Miss A. remained with her grandparents for several years, visited by her parents as often as their work and their finances permitted. She returned to live with them permanently at the age of seven. On leaving school, she trained as a telephonist and usually took temporary posts, explaining to us that she liked to be