Chairman Henry H. Work: The kind of problems that one sees and one thinks one can do something about as far as we are concerned in pediatrics must, I think, be related pretty much to the early years of life. I would like to give you something that I have recently discovered: a nice formation in addition to our own mental concept of what is happening to the personality. I don't know if it fits your experience but I have found a great deal of good in it.
In the preparatory work last year for the White House Conference, Dr. Eric Erickson was called on and provided some very excellent material which he is presenting now in book form, in a book called Childhood and Society, and also in a publication of the Macy Foundation called "Symposium on the Healthy Personality." He breaks down the changes in personality relating to growth in the following way: the first year of life, we all think of and know as a period of taking things in. The child lies there and his responses, by and large, are in terms of what goes into him. He does this right from the day he is born. We know that he doesn't have the 5 senses very well organized, although he possesses all of them and we know that his motor responses are diffuse but they get more and more orderly during that year. In terms of what he wants from the outside world, Dr. Erickson feels that trust in his environment is his major concern.