Conditions of the Growing Inner Conflict

We have just seen how every new born infant starts its separate existence with a divided interest. Through much diversity of subsequent experiences, the infant may develop many irreconcilable tendencies, of varying intensities. It becomes ever more conscious of satisfying indulgences, and of distressing thwartings. These postnatal indulgences first come through bodily functions, such as the taking of food and the elimination of excreta. In many children, the discovery of anal and oral satisfactions is soon followed by a discovery of the possibility of some pleasing genital sensations. The tensions of inner conflict and the incipient anxieties, which originate with the birth-process, become dissociated from their creating experiences, and become attached to the subsequent anal, oral and genital experiences. The earlier tensions are also lowered, or intensified, by the later experiences. In other words, it is varying intensities of these infantile experiences which largely determine the degree of psycho-pathology, or of healthy-mindedness, which may develop in later life. Always, some important factors are already established, merely through being born. Of course, these birth-factors will change their relative importance. Future experiences may help us to outgrow, to perpetuate, or to modify, the earlier, tentative, affect-values, fixations and reaction-patterns. The earlier pre-dispositions can be either accentuated or minimized in later years, by consciously applied disciplinary methods, or by the unconscious work of the wider experiences of life. In these differences we also see the concrete results, of the introversion and extroversion processes. Both processes are always present and always working. In their obvious manifestations they produce all the irreconcilable temperamental and symptomatic differences that can be found. In the intensity of the affects, which are engendered in these early temperamental states, we also see a part of the pre-determining factors