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Freud chose to call the high perceptive thresh-hold of organisms a stimulus barrier. As its efficiency diminishes with the child's growth, object relations develop. Before the nursling can adequately perceive stimuli, the ideal mother serves as a supplementary barrier against traumatic internal and external excitations. Infants whose maternal protective barriers are deficient develop ego weaknesses and inadequate differentiation of ego and id. If the stimulus barrier or the maternal protective barrier is deficient, or if the drive strength of the child is unusually increased, ego development may be disturbed. If in addition the mother adds traumatic stimuli, ego development may be abnormal.
A fragment of a case of a catatonic woman provides information which can be interpreted to mean that her stimulus barrier was broken by the mother's adding external stimulations and failing to relieve inner tensions, by using the baby to solve her own problems and specifically through continual auditory excitation.
A tentative conclusion is adduced that under certain conditions of mother-child relationship in infancy, the accentuation of auditory stimuli may cause an unusually strong bond between the Gestalt of being mothered and the auditory sensorium, that is, the development of a strong link between oral and auditory sensorial spheres.