[Psychohygienic problems of development in early childhood (author's transl)].

For a "social environmental protection" as one of the most urgent problems in infantile psychohygiene, the following conclusions should be taken into consideration: 1. In particular during the first years of life the development of the child is, within certain limits, sensitive to influences from the environment and therefore it can be fostered or disturbed from the outside. Congenital, prenatal, perinatal and postnatal injuries to the brain and sensory organs must be given great attention psychohygienically. 2. The social influences exercised on the child by persons of his environment, their availability, their emotional relationships and the development of a durable link predominate psychohygienically. In addition, the material security of young families and their type of accommodation (e.g. granting of loans to help set up a home) must be considered. 3. The possibilities of exercising a positive educational influence on a mentally and psychically sound development of the child as a person and member of society are greatest at the beginning of life and diminish during childhood. The effectiveness of negative educational and social interference factors is also subject to this rule from which again the necessity of adopting psychohygienic measures for the young child is derived. 4. The phenomenon of increasingly imbalanced behaviour of older children and juveniles which cause concern today, are as a rule symptoms of a chiefly environmentally determined disturbance upsetting the personality, which often originates in early childhood. Psychohygienic measures must be concentrated on this. 5. The inadequate care of young children accounting for one third of the population, a phenomenon which can be read in the statistical records and which has risen sharply during the last few years, makes it possible to forecast a further increase in developmental and behavioral disturbances of both an intellectual and psychological nature as well as in infantile and juvenile criminality in the coming years to an at present unimaginable extent. 6. In contrast to general opinion, the situation calls for an urgent fundamental revaluation of the importance of intrafamiliar social conditions of development and of the parental educational work on the small child, which to date, have been underestimated and neglected. At the same time many of the presently overrated extrafamiliar institutions of education and training for the older child need to be relativised. 7. The advances in developmental biology which allow us to realize the basic dependence of the future social fate of the individual - and thus the extent of disturbed social relationships in society - on the intrafamily conditions must become a political issue, if psychohygiene as ameans to prevent avoidable disturbances is to be taken seriously. Thus the securement of adequate intrafamily conditions with respect to development and upbringing, in particular of the young child, must head the list of social political priorities, also in times when money is in short supply. 8...