ABSTRACT
To help the reader more fully understand our approach to hypnotherapy, we present some themes of child development that form the rationale for our methods with children.
e Urge for Experience
Beginning at birth, babies seek stimulation. In the first days of life, they prefer to focus their gaze on something and prefer a more complex visual stimulus (e.g., a striped pattern) to a simple one (e.g., a solid red square). Most of all, they enjoy gazing at a human face. Very soon, children define all objects as things to find out about, and they make maximal use of sensory and motor development to experience themselves and their world. They do this first with mouths and eyes, then with hands, and finally with their whole bodies. If the results of such experiences are generally pleasurable, they continue to explore in more complex ways, using to their own advantage such developing ego functions as motility and coordination, language, perceptual skills, memory, ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and social skills. Temperamental and environmental factors combine to shape and often to put limits on the child’s urge for experience, but only rarely can these cancel the urge altogether. For example, in the case of the frightened child who retreats to a corner on the first day of school, a patient teacher usually finds that the child prefers to stand facing the room rather than facing the wall. For such children, visual exploration often leads to positive school adjustment as efficiently as motor exploration for other children. As Fromm (1972) pointed out, it is very important not to confuse behavioral passivity with ego passivity. On the other hand, Kagan’s work (Kagan, 1994) has documented that there is substantial capacity for change in temperament and behavior between 2 and 7 years. Evidence of an inhibited personality in infancy does not necessarily predict the adolescent or adult personality.
