III: Review

Since I did not observe these two babies from birth I shall never know how they were right from the start. Martin was already fifteen days old when I saw him properly for the first time, and my first observation of Jack took place around the time when he should have been born had he not been premature; he was then one month old. A fortnight — and even more, a month — is a long time for a baby. Neither had I any means of knowing anything about the nine crucial months of pregnancy. One can only speculate about their life inside the womb. I was, however, in a position to observe the impact that their environment seemed to have on them from very early days and to see some of the means and mechanisms each employed to cope with the impact on them of their post-natal world. Clearly, however, I was not in any position to tell their ‘whole’ story even over the time when I knew them.

A marked retreat seemed evident in Martin from the beginning: in his closing his eyes to the world, in his obsessive and constant movements, in his resisting novelties and pushing them away with his tongue. Jack seemed to have been born more open although also very vulnerable, and in a sense probably not yet ready to be born. It is impossible to know what kind of influences and experiences they may have felt inside the womb. Yet both babies had come out of the womb at least physically fit for post-natal life and in this respect pre-natal life had proved safe for them. That stage, however, had ended suddenly, and presumably unexpectedly, as their births were traumatic: Martin was born through Caesarean section and Jack was born prematurely. The relative security and protection of the womb was then abruptly replaced by the harsh impact of other human beings and of a world in which they were bombarded by confusion, bewilderment, disappointment, and in Martin's case by humiliation, and in Jack's by absent-mindedness and emotional poverty.

In the narrow world of the womb no harsh sounds