Adaptation to Reality in Early Infancy

The psychology and the physiology of the newborn can not be separated from one another. The psychoanalytic theory of the instinctual reactions of the newborn is based upon the fact that the infant upon leaving the womb, which offers comparatively few stimuli, enters into an environment which presents a superabundance of them. Because no protective barrier (Reizschutz) against these stimuli has been developed, the infant is overwhelmed with excitation. This analytic concept does not conflict with the generally accepted assumption that the nervous system of the newborn is not mature. This immaturity, not as yet fully understood in all its physiological details, is responsible for the fact that the motor excitability of the newborn and of early infancy is much greater than that of later life, and that inhibitions are not yet fully developed.

In recent years observations of the early reactions of the newborn have led to the generally accepted opinion that the newborn reacts to every form of stimulus with an undifferentiated, general motor discharge. Numerous choreoathetoid movements, too vague to be described, do not cease completely even during sleep. These movements, under the influence of strong stimuli from without or of instinctual needs which are stimuli from within, increase to a veritable 'storm of excitation' (11).1 The 'storm of excitation' invades the whole motor system, including the visceral. The crying fit is only one special form of the 'storm of excitation'; in this sense it is not a teleological action in that it has a goal