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Mead examines the concept of normal personality and finds in case histories a tendency to assume that changes in the environment have a significant bearing on character formation, and tacitly, that most people are raised in a homogeneous and unchanging culture. The contrary is so true that that part of the population which is brought up in a really stable background is so small that they actually represent an abnormal fraction and 'are placed in a position so deviant that it becomes a liability through its unusualness'. Mead goes on to discuss the impact of cultural changes on various types of immigrants and in conflicts between different generations and social classes. Where transition occurs from a stable homogeneous culture, two stages may be distinguished. In the first generation, the old cultural realities undergo forms of amnesia, distortion and confusion; the goals and standards become inconsistent and the second generation is raised with a 'tentative' approach to life and with a fragmentation of the personality which becomes particularly marked under conditions of stress. It is this second generation which has become 'the expected personality type for the world today'. Modern American culture has developed a variety of self-corrective devices, including emphasis on progressive education, which allows freedom for development of new, integrated, cultural forms.