ABSTRACT
Basic trust and a secure sexual identity are prerequisites for emotional, sexual and domestic intimacy, for mutual satisfactions, responsibilities and decisions, and for the shared anticipation of the birth and rearing of children. The coincidence in time of the different developmental and social processes is thought to determine the clustering of later personality characteristics. A psychoanalyst and anthropologist, he takes account of sociology, history, religion, and the arts in describing human development. If the child's stage of initial socialization and his parents' teaching of social conventions are successful, he emerges with a sense of autonomy, freewill and pride in his competence. The social institutions supporting the period of childhood are marriage customs and traditional family structures backed by belief systems and legal codes. Each stage of childhood brings with it a new set of alternative patterns for social interaction, together with the capacity for new emotions.
