Infant's social emotional development

The infant's emotions and the rapidity of the change of emotion has overwhelming intensity . The infant lacks stability and control in his affective life, and though his mental life is very naive it lacks the organization. The two most marked emotions during infancy are affection and anger. Affection may first be shown by little patting, stroking, and handling movements made by the baby on his mother's body ; later he watches the expression on his mother's face and begins to make little caressive movements towards it. These are the positive movements referred to earlier. While the baby is actually suckling he is satisfying a very intense craving, and gaining a very great satisfaction from it. This action may be termed passionate, at least in its early stages, and a disturbance of the activity will usually produce a tempestuous reaction shown by screaming and even by kicking and punching. This is the first characteristic expression of anger, and usually the first occasion for it. The frustration of a desire, the deprivation of a satisfaction, thus produces an intense expression, and so presumably an intense feeling of anger and hate. This reaction is liable to occur in some form or other throughout babyhood, and in some cases throughout childhood. Anger, however, in infancy changes quickly to affection when the desire is satisfied.

The infant feels that the person who satisfies him is good and lovable. The good mother or nurse gradually becomes associated with everything that is satisfying, pleasurable, lovable and good. He almost wants to devour this person, to absorb her into himself. Most mothers will testify that babies sometimes bite the breast in a hungry or playful way. It is from this conception that the psycho-analytic term " oral " has arisen, and certainly the mouth is the all-important organ at this period.
By taking from the good mother he feels he makes himself good and fills himself with good things. Babies suck their thumbs as a substitute for the breast, and endeavor to reproduce the pleasurable sensations of breast-feeding by this means. Suckling when proceeding harmoniously provides the infant with satisfaction, contentment, security and happiness. Bottle-feeding, if carefully handled, can be made to produce almost the same feelings. It is important to ensure that the baby has sufficient food, and is not left with a feeling of hunger after a feed.

Now when for some reason breast-feeding is delayed, when satisfaction is withheld, postponed, or interrupted, anger will be the normal reaction. Anger implies a rush of aggressive or hate feelings towards someone or something. It does not seem far-fetched to assume that very soon the infant comes to regard the person who fails to satisfy him as bad, at least temporarily. He wants then to direct his aggression on to her by the only means he knows, by biting, scratching, or eating. (It is a common experience to hear Nursery School children talk of biting, chewing, killing or cutting up into little bits. This is simply a way of expressing anger originally felt and expressed in some way in babyhood.) A difficult situation then arises. The infant feels love and hate towards the same person. If to hate implies the wish to destroy or damage then he feels he may lose his loved parent by his own action. Moreover, he feels intensely guilty about his aggressive feelings and anxious lest they be met with retaliation and retribution. He feels very helpless and dependent on the good services of his mother, and so an intolerable situation arises. Quite acute anxiety symptoms may be noted in infancy well within the first year, especially if there has been an undue amount of deprivation or if numerous feeding difficulties have occurred. A baby may also feel anger towards his mother if she gives too little milk or if he is not helped to " get the wind up " after a feed and he suffers consequently from colic or distention. He may, too, experience the terrifying feeling that his mother's food is bad and may harm him. The countless phantasies of poisoning that little children express in their play, and that are so common in fairytale lore, must surely arise from these early fears. These feelings in infancy are to a large extent unconscious and only dimly appreciated, and it is of course very difficult to gauge just what the infant really feels. Psycho-analytic studies have shown, however, that the patient during analysis relives these early emotional situations to some extent, and it is thus that we have gained more insight into the infant's emotional life.

To some extent the baby will experience feelings in connection with bodily sensations. He experiences colic, and all the sensations related to digestive and eliminating processes. Bowel movements, especially if there is any disturbance with their regular functioning, are liable to cause both pain and pleasure. Muscle tension and the retention and expulsion of faeces appear to cause the baby sensations of both pleasure and pain, at least by the time he is two months old. The experience of parents in regard to toilet training is evidence that a certain amount of emotion surrounds the whole subject, and that both urine and faeces have a certain emotional significance to the child and tend to be regarded as something precious to be given to his mother, or as something bad and destructive which may harm his mother. Any clinician who has had to treat cases of incontinence will agree that psychological factors are as important as physiological ones in causation and in treatment.

By nine months the baby's awareness of people has developed sufficiently for him to feel jealousy quite acutely and also to show defiance occasionally. He is vaguely aware that other people have claims on his mother, and he only very grudgingly shares her attention, feeling jealous to some extent of his father and of other interfering persons. But both defiance and jealousy are more marked at a later stage of emotional development.

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