[Follow-up study of school age children having received inpatient treatment for infant atrophy, with regard to their personality development and social adjustment].

In the personality development controlled by complicated and numerous influences we searched for those characteristics which can be made responsible for infantile atrophy. In comparison with children of average development and of the same age we found that in addition to a somatic retardation the intellectual efficiency is impaired in 60 percent of the cases; we were also able to find disorders of the emotional circle. All of these result in the disharmony of personality. In the capacities for adaptation the narrow, familial, environmental influences appear to be of importance in that in contrast to children showing no somatic damages whatsoever these influences exert a greater effect. Those children, therefore, who had been suffering from atrophy are somatically determined and show slight adaptive difficulties due to environmental difficulties.