Freud, in a famous paper, has described the passage [p177] from infancy to maturity as a transition from the dominion of momentary pleasure and pain to the dominion of reality. This theory is not peculiar to psychoanalysis in any of its several schools, and it does not depend upon the controverted points of doctrine. It is, in fact, more or less of a commonplace in psychological thought. I am employing it here because a distinguished colleague of Freud’s, Dr. S. Ferenczi of Budapest, has made an attempt to indicate the chief stages in the development between these two poles of experience. It is a most useful bit of speculation, and while I believe it could be duplicated in terms either of behaviorism or of the _gestalt-theorie_, I do not happen to have come across any portrait of the idea which is as vivid as Dr. Ferenczi’s. The first stage of human development, says Ferenczi, takes place in the womb where the embryo lives as a parasite of the mother’s body. An outer world exists for it only in a very restricted degree; all it needs for protection, warmth, and nourishment is assured by the mother. Because everything is there which is necessary for the satisfaction of the instincts, Ferenczi calls this the Period of Unconditional Omnipotence. It is, therefore, rather disagreeable and perhaps terrifying to be born, for with the detachment from the mother and the “rude disturbance of the wish-less tranquillity he had enjoyed in the womb,” the trouble of living begins, and evokes feelings which might perhaps be described as a longing to recover the perfect pre-natal adjustment. Nurses instinctively recognize this longing, says Ferenczi, and as soon as the infant expresses his discomfort by struggling and crying, they deliberately create a situation [p178] which resembles as closely as possible the one he has just left. They lay him down by the warm body of the mother, or wrap him up in soft, warm coverings, shield his eyes from the light and his ears from noise. The illusion is more or less complete, for, of course, the infant is unaware of the activities of the nurse. For all he knows “his wishes are realized simply by imagining the satisfaction of them.” Ferenczi calls this the Period of Magical-Hallucinatory Omnipotence. But this period does not last very long, since the nurse is unable to anticipate every desire that the growing infant feels. “The hallucinatory representation of the wish-fulfilment soon proves inadequate to bring about any longer a real wish-fulfilment.” So the infant has to give signals, and the more complicated his wishes become the more signals he has to give. He begins to use a gesture-language, and if there is a willing nurse always at hand without too many new-fangled notions, the child gets what he wants for the mere trouble of expressing his wants. Ferenczi calls this the Period of Omnipotence by the Help of Magic Gestures.