Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

February 10, 1953. SOME HYPOTHESES ON THE ROLE OF THE CONGENITAL ACTIVITY TYPE IN PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT. Margaret E. Fries, M.D.

Newborn infants, in the period between recovery from the transient consequences of delivery and the development of an adult startle-response, are found to differ in the amount and kind of activity produced by physical stimulation. This congenital activity type may be graded as 'quiet', 'moderately active', and 'active' normal, or as pathologically hypoactive or hyperactive. The mature personality must be influenced by these early differences and the probable influence is investigated in five areas: 1. The congenital activity type by determining an early relationship with the mother will color later objective relationships, while the mother's response to the child's activity type will help to form the later pattern of the child's behavior. (For example a quiet baby may be welcome to the parents because of its small demands on their attention, or an active baby may give the mother narcissistic pleasure by its gymnastic prowess.) 2. Differences in activity type may perhaps determine, by different sorts of autostimulation, the later importance of various autoerotic areas. 3. Active babies explore the environment actively; quiet babies receive impressions more passively, and perhaps in smaller number, through the mother and other adults. The quiet child will therefore have fewer reality-testing experiences, while the active one may have greater difficulty in acquiring ego control of motor activity. 4. These earliest reactions to physical stimuli are perhaps forerunners of later ego defense mechanisms. For example, the quiet child's tendency to respond to stimuli by withdrawal and sleep may lead later on to a preference for regression, denial, and fantasy. The reaction to the primal scene will also vary with the congenital activity type, the active child responding with restlessness and crying and thus evoking parental displeasure.