Infant Development

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The term infant development refers to the processes of psychic organization and transformation that lead the preverbal infant from absolute dependency to the earliest integrations of the ego during the first year of life.

By studying the "psychical apparatus" in its structures, functioning, and development, Sigmund Freud established facts and proposed hypotheses that are indispensable to the study of early development. Freud's newborn is a being in a state of helplessness (Hilflosigkeit) whose development requires that a...