The component of the healthy personality that is the first to develop is the sense of trust. As with other personality components, the sense of trust is not something that develops independent of other manifestations of growth. It is not that infants learn how to use their bodies for purposeful movement, learn to recognize people and objects around them, and also develop a sense of trust. Rather, the concept "sense of trust" is a shortcut expression intended to convey the characteristic flavor of all the child’s satisfying experiences at this early age.
Studies of mentally ill individuals and observations of infants who have been grossly deprived of affection suggest that trust is an early-formed and important element in the healthy personality. Psychiatrists find again and again that the most serious illnesses occur in patients who have been sorely neglected or abused or otherwise deprived of love in infancy.
Observations of infants brought up in emotionally unfavorable institutions or moved to hospitals with inadequate facilities for psychological care support these findings. A recent report says that "Infants under 5 months of age who have been in an institution for some time present a well-defined picture. The outstanding features are listlessness, relative immobility, quietness, poor sleep, an appearance of unhappiness, etc. " Another investigation of children separated from their mothers at 6 to 12 months and not provided with an adequate substitute comes to much the same conclusion.
Most significant for our present point, these reactions are most likely to occur in children who, up to the time of separation at 6 to 9 months of age, had a happy relation with their mothers, while those whose relations were unhappy are relatively unaffected. It is at about this age that the struggle between trusting and mistrusting the world comes to a climax, for it is then that children first perceive clearly that they and their environment are things apart. That at this point formerly happy infants should react do badly to separation suggests, indeed, that they had a faith that now has been shattered.
In most primitive societies and in some sections of our own society, the attention accorded infants is more in line with natural processes. Throughout infancy the baby is surrounded by people who are ready to feed it, fondle it, and otherwise comfort it at a moment’s notice. Moreover, these ministrations are given spontaneously and wholeheartedly, and without that element of nervous concern that may characterize the efforts of young mothers made self-conscious and insecure by our scientific age.
We must not exaggerate, however. Most infants in our society too find smiles and comfort. As their own bodies come to be more dependable, there is added to the pleasures of increasing sensory response and motor control the pleasure of the mothers’ encouragement. Then, too, psychologists tell us that mothers create a sense of trust in their children not by the particular techniques they employ but by the sensitiveness with which they respond to the children’s needs and by their overall attitude.
The author raises evidence of mental illness and other disorders in children ().
A. to introduce a discussion of the effect of institutions on children
B. to show the effect on children of an unhappy relation with their mothers during infancy
C. to warn parents of the dangers of neglecting and abusing their children
D. to support the point that trust is an early formed and important element of a healthy personality