Some Problems of Ego Development in Blind Children

When blind children are compared with their seeing contemporaries with regard to their development (A. Freud, 1963), the nature and range of their achievements tend to be underrated. Observers usually emphasize—as we have done in earlier papers (Burlingham, 1961); (A.-M. Sandler, 1963)—the slow rate of forward moves after the first weeks of life; that blind infants need more than the usual stimulation from the mother to respond to her; that the acoustic and tactile sensations do not seem to have the same arousing effects (Greenacre, 1959) on the infant as the visual ones; that they do not impel him to reach out, do not excite his curiosity or, later, his urge to imitate in the same manner. Above all, the impression is created that in addition to the lack of vision itself, there is also the lack of stimulation which vision normally exercises on the other senses, i.e., a contributory or synthesizing factor without which the blind child cannot make full use of hearing, touch, etc. Among the children under our observation, it was not uncommon, especially among the backward ones, to find a second sense, usually touch, employed so little that for all practical purposes it had to be considered out of action.

Due to this general slowing up of progressive processes, it is easily overlooked how much ingenuity the blind child actually expends at every stage. A mother or nurse may use endless patience or may despair while trying to teach a blind child some simple task such as fetching a toy, tying a shoelace, stringing beads; she may