Introduction

Abstract

This book tries to trace the course of social development in the child from birth to maturity. It assumes that the neonate comes into the world with the endowment and the need to contact others, to attach itself to the surrounding humans and by this very endowment enforces these humans to attach themselves to it. The book follows the main vicissitudes in this process and describes in short outlines some of the disturbing manifestations of failure at different ages in the smooth progress of socialization — the process by which the child adapts to the requirements of the social group of which he is a member.