ABSTRACT
The psychology with which I am concerned takes maturity to be synonymous with health. The child of ten who is healthy is mature for the child of ten; the healthy three-year-old is mature for the child of three; the adolescent is a mature adolescent and is not prematurely adult. The adult who is healthy is mature as an adult, and by this we mean that he or she has passed through all the immature stages, all the stages of maturity at the younger ages. The healthy adult has all the immaturities to fall back upon either for fun or in time of need, or in secret auto-erotic experience or in dreaming. To do justice to this concept of ‘maturity at age’ one would need to re-state the whole theory of emotional development, but I assume in my readers some knowledge of dynamic psychology and of the theory by which the psycho-analyst works.
