This paper deals with certain early phenomena encountered in infants and prelatency children which, considered against normal maturation, may be prognostic of the wide range of disturbances which vary from near psychosis on the one hand to all degrees of ego disturbance on the other. It seems that the development of such children lacks integration at all times. They show peculiarities and unevenness of their general maturational patterning, of their physiological functioning and of their psychological apparatus. They show delay in ego development and frequently deviations in the expression of aggressive and libidinal drives. This is often associated with an overload of tension evident from an early age and with various manifestations of anxiousness.