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The analytic treatment of seriously disturbed patients has been the greatest source of information about early psychic development. The analyses of adolescent and postadolescent patients, who are trying to adjust to anticipated marital and parental life, provided Fries with an opportunity to trace in the same person the influence of the earliest drives, defenses, and object relationships on their present ego ideals as mate and parent. According to the author, one can tentatively reconstruct from such analyses the earliest time that the mother's own libidinal development can exert an appreciable influence on the infant, and what role the infant's congenital make-up plays in the development of his object relationship. Longitudinal studies on newborn infants, many starting with the mother's pregnancy, have revealed how the mother's attitudes influence the infant's affects. They also revealed the influence that the sex, physical appearance, color of skin, vigor, and motility of the infant can have on the mother's attitude.
Some questions raised in an earlier paper in collaboration with Paul Woolf on the variable infantile motility types are dealt with in detail.