ABSTRACT
The evolution of speech must have taken thousands of years. Speech is of crucial importance for the full development of self-consciousnsss and self-assessment. Since deaf children learn to react in the same way—although responding to gestures and not speech—it may be that at least the beginning of the recognition of ‘self’ comes about before speech. The importance of hearing appears when the child reacts to spoken words referring to people, things and actions—the deaf child can only react to gesture and facial expression. When a child has a strongly negative relationship with the human beings in his environment, his speech development may be seriously retarded. If adults are consistent chiefly in being inconsistent during the years of personality development, the effect on the child is to prevent him from forming any stable permanent response patterns, or building up a consistent and permanent ‘ideal’ of what he should be.
