The influence of early environment in the development of neurosis and neurotic character*

Abstract

This chapter examines a preliminary survey of the soil conditions with a few suggestions regarding their interaction with the organism. It discusses the environmental factors which are operative during the child's earliest years and which appear so to influence the development of the child's character that they may reasonably be termed factors responsible for neurosis. Many of the observations hitherto made on the environments of neurotic children have been made by workers untrained in analysis. There are many children who have never suffered any obvious psychological trauma, who have remained in a relatively stable home, looked after by their mothers and well cared for according to ordinary standards. Yet they have developed into neurotic children with great anxiety and guilt and abnormally strong sexual and aggressive impulses. A neurotic parent may differentiate extremely between the boys and the girls or again may idolize one child and pour hatred on another who becomes the personification of evil.

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