The Magic Years by Selma H. Fraiberg

Author:Selma H. Fraiberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

WEAK SPOTS IN THE CONTROL SYSTEM.

So we begin to see something like a control system when language takes over the job of engineering the mental machinery, allowing certain impulses to go through, redirecting others along alternative routes, blocking still others at dangerous intersections. Unfortunately, a highly organized control system will not be perfected by the child for several years and the mechanical problems in operating the early model, two-year-old mental apparatus, create many vexing problems for the child. Consider, for example, the inefficiency of this early model control system. The two and a half year old who has to say, “No, no, mustn’t dood it” to himself whenever a wayward impulse seizes him, has to expend enormous amounts of energy to stop himself. He has to tell himself what to do with an impulse each time he needs to manage it. This becomes tiresome, probably as tiresome for the two year old as for his parents in the parallel situation of telling him what to do. So a good deal of the time the young child either neglects to send himself signals or signals too late. But compare this “hand-operated” apparatus with the late model automatic system that takes over later. At five or six a large part of this system is completely automatic. A signal is flashed, a response is made, and the impulse is stopped or discharged without any conscious thought directing it! Unless the apparatus comes up against a problem for which a fresh solution must be found, it can handle a vast number of decisions without bringing them up for conference at all. Under ordinary circumstances a six year old confronted with a bowl of eggs on the kitchen table does not experience either the impulse to smash them or the self-prohibition against smashing them. If the mischievous impulse arises, it is checked before it becomes fully conscious. And so it goes for hundreds of decisions in the course of the day. An automatic signal system takes over a large part of the management of impulses in the older child where the two year old is obligated to struggle laboriously with such impulses on a conscious level.

So the two year old’s inefficient control system is full of mechanical flaws and is subject to many disorders. The signals get mixed, the signals may never be sent at all, and sometimes the two year old finds the whole business of running this switchboard too complicated and attributes the failures in connections to diabolical agents outside of himself, like Stevie’s “Gerald.” But we will also find that many of the anxieties of this stage of development can be attributed to weaknesses in the control system. A little child who is trying hard to manage his impulses is subjected to the tensions of opposing wishes and may acquire strange and inexplicable fears in his attempts to resolve conflict. In such instances the control system appears to be making more demands upon the child than he is ready to make. So

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