The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] My dear friends! For now, I’ll just show you this boy’s drawings. He creates very beautiful things; he has a knack for capturing the details of objects so vividly; right here, you can see how closely he observes everything. Here is a sheet where you can see how he organizes his work; he seems to have a particular inclination toward drawing the things he learns in school. He does this at the school over there, where the setup allows everyone to work on their own projects. — Here, we take a frugal approach. We use both sides of the paper.

Turning to the boy:

[ 2 ] You'll let me draw you on the blackboard. There, that's all I needed from you.

The boy will be mentioned later. A new child is brought in.

[ 3 ] We’ll go ahead and bring the child here. — Now take a look at this enormous enlargement of a child’s head due to hydrocephalus. We’ll discuss this later. Its circumference is now 64 centimeters; when we first received him, it was 44 centimeters. On February 25, it was 54 1/2 centimeters; by April 7, it had grown to 56 centimeters; from April 7 to April 11, it grew again; on April 19, it was 58 centimeters; on May 28, it was 61 centimeters; and on July 1, it was 64 centimeters. Incidentally, the child’s physical development is not abnormal; he is just like any other child. He reaches for things, has a very good appetite, and is actually—with the exception of one crisis—absolutely lively. You can see the immense size when you look at his little ears, which are naturally proportionate to his size, so that you can see where the enlargement of the head begins. It starts here and continues here. The face is not affected by this; it is somewhat swollen, but it is not affected. The child is such that, when you look at him now, you might perhaps sense that he perceives things with his eyes; but it is merely a very general impression of light, not a precise one.

[ 4 ] The tragic thing is that, before I got there, I received a telegram saying that his father had died of a heart attack.

[ 5 ] If you look at the child as a whole and compare it to an embryonic formation, you will see nothing other than a giant embryo, so that you can immediately observe: the child has remained in the embryonic stage and has retained the laws of growth of the embryonic stage, continuing them into the post-embryonic state. The fact that we have not yet been able to achieve any reduction is due to the fact that these processes are driven extremely strongly from within. I still very much hope that, once a certain point has been passed, we will be able to harmonize the head to a certain degree. — Otherwise, he is a cheerful boy.

[ 6 ] That is the nature of human enigmas: the things that arise in such anomalies shed deep light on life—not only human life, but the life of the entire world.

The medical history will now be read aloud.

[ 7 ] The child came to us at six months old; the child was born in August of last year, and I gave him his name at that time, just when I was away in England. The child was born normally. The mother was always healthy during the pregnancy—I ask you to view these facts in such a way that they will find their own interpretation later on—and felt particularly well; I ask you to attach particular importance to this remark; she typed a great deal during this time. The child showed nothing unusual at birth. So please note that the child showed nothing unusual at birth, immediately after emerging from the embryonic state, because the embryonic state had been normal throughout. It began to show abnormalities after it started breathing through its lungs. The umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck, and there was meconium in the amniotic fluid. The child weighed five and a quarter pounds; fourteen days after birth, it had a seizure—please take note of this. Thus, it became clearly evident that the ego-organization and the astral body were unable to enter the physical and etheric bodies. The child flailed its arms and turned blue. Turning blue always signifies an inability to submerge into the physical body. When this condition is very strongly developed, it manifests in a distinctive manner. It need be nothing more than the astral body being strongly configured at birth. It can be strongly configured at birth, as was the case with Goethe, who was born completely blue and was only later able to incorporate the astral body and the ego organization. The convulsion occurred later. Then, during the first half-year, a completely normal development took place. Of course, it was not entirely normal; the later disproportion between the head and the limbs went unnoticed. The child was breastfed. The head was strikingly small at birth, which indicates that the cause should not be sought so much in a weakness of the nervous-sensory system. Beginning in September, the head circumference slowly began to increase. Of course, it had already begun earlier; the mother did not consider it abnormal. Even at that time, when it must have been considerable, the mother still did not consider it abnormal—until the child gained 380 grams in body weight in a single week. By mid-December, the head circumference was 49 centimeters. The child was quiet and did not cry much; he was apathetic. The fontanelles were very tense. The child had a good appetite. Pus-filled blisters formed on the scalp. Appetite and bowel movements were normal. The child was then brought to us.

[ 8 ] The task now was to gain an insight into the spiritual—specifically, through a case like the one at hand, where, of course, the most important thing is direct perception, including perception of the spiritual. Now, in this child’s case, it turns out that he bears an astral body within himself—the mother was also present at the time—which quite clearly, with tremendous clarity, bears the features of the mother’s astral body. As striking as this is, it is something very rare. One cannot say that the ego-organization also bears these features; that is not the case. The ego is simply still underdeveloped; it points to an ego organization that children usually have by the sixth or seventh month of pregnancy; it has remained at that stage. The ego organization does not seem to have undergone the final months of pregnancy due to the extraordinarily well-developed astral body. Now, after birth, the child retained within itself, through this astral body, all the powers it had possessed during the embryonic period. Now you need only consider that, particularly in the first months of post-embryonic development, the orientation of the embryonic period essentially continues; in fact, in the first months, even outside the mother’s womb, the child’s development still bears a strong resemblance to that of the embryonic state. This is because the radical transformation that the child’s physical being undergoes is initially centered in the respiratory system. The child comes into contact with the outside air, but this connection with the outside air must first gradually take hold and only after some time does it affect the entire organism. We know that it influences the child from the very beginning, but it only gradually comes to affect the entire organism. Consequently, in the early stages—due to the continuing influence of embryonic forces—it is still not apparent what devastation will later occur in the human organism when infantilism goes as far as we are dealing with here in a radical case of infantilism, where it goes so far that the embryonic organization is retained.

[ 9 ] Now, as you know, it is characterized by the fact that we are dealing with a powerful head organization and a small body. This powerful head organization is entirely the result of the interplay of cosmic forces. What initially takes place in the embryonic state with the head structure is, in its entirety, almost entirely the work of cosmic forces. The mother’s womb provides the place where what is happening is protected from earthly forces. You must have in your mental image the mother’s womb as an organ that encloses a space impervious to earthly influences, so that this space is reserved for cosmic influences. We have a space that is directly connected to the cosmos, within which cosmic influences take place. It is here that the development of the head organization takes place. When the human forces of the womb—insofar as they receive the child—act upon it, the metabolic-limb organization begins to orient itself toward these forces, so that you see: in the child, the cosmic forces have simply remained for the post-embryonic stage. They retain the upper hand over what should have been imparted as strength—the forces that the child would otherwise receive for earthly development, for the development of the limb-metabolic system. Well, the consequence of this is quite clear. If the child were to remain in the womb longer—which is an absurd hypothesis—if it were to remain there longer than ten months, the head would continue to grow, and the limbs would be unable to develop. There is only opportunity for the extraterrestrial, the cosmic, to grow.

[ 10 ] Now one had to ask: Where did all this come from? — And I must say, it is quite strange, actually shocking, that just as we were about to discuss this whole phenomenon, a telegram arrived stating that the father had died of a heart attack. We arrived at the following conclusion, which was then confirmed by the medical history: we realized, for example, that the mother had to be asked, “Did you experience anything emotionally significant during your pregnancy?”—And I phrased it this way: “Weren’t you sad that the child didn’t remain inside you, but was born?” — The mother affirmed this. The mother had based her entire connection on that bond; it was part of her emotional life—one could put it this way—that she was sorry she had not been able to keep the child within her womb, that the child had been torn from her through birth. This feeling points, on the one hand, to an extraordinarily strong connection in the karmic sense, and on the other hand, to the fact that this very circumstance created the conditions for those forces active during the embryonic period to remain within the child. You see, this is where the mother’s abnormal inner life begins, and—naturally, with a deep karmic connection—it is transferred to the child.

[ 11 ] Well, life’s circumstances are very complicated, my dear friends, so it’s hard to keep track of everything all the time, but in such cases, the facts sometimes bring things into focus. You see, not even a year has passed since the child was born, and the father dies of a heart attack. Such conditions are always interconnected; they don’t just happen overnight. The father had been suffering from heart disease for quite some time. You need only consider how closely heart disease is connected to the functioning of the human limbs, and how the structure of the legs immediately weakens under the influence of certain heart conditions—how the most important aspects of the limbs—the joint tissues and synovial fluids—suffer under the influence of heart disease. Now we must not forget that hereditary patterns are such that the structure of the limbs is most strongly influenced by the father, while the structure of the head is most strongly influenced by the mother. Now imagine the concept in such a way that, under certain circumstances, an inability to channel the forces of the paternal organization into the limbs is already passed on to the child, causing the head’s organization to be driven to extremes by the mother. Now you have the explanation for why the mother loves the child in the womb: because the child has inherited few paternal genetic forces, and because the mother was able to provide the main contribution.

[ 12 ] Now you see, we have presented a case before you. You need only know that precisely such a case provides the primordial phenomenon for a whole series of children with abnormalities. What you have observed in this child is merely the most extreme case of infantilism, which dates back to the embryonic stage. You find the same thing in all sorts of forms throughout childhood development. Just as the embryonic state here overwhelms everything that comes later, so too can the first stage of life overwhelm the child after the change of teeth. Just as failure to grow into the post-embryonic state occurs, it can also happen that the child does not grow into the third stage of life; the children become physically sexually mature, but do not grow into this life stage—between sexual maturity and the early twenties—with their entire human constitution; instead, they retain the orientation of the forces active between the ages of seven and fourteen. We are dealing with a whole range of forms of infantilism. This is the most extreme case, and from a medical and educational standpoint, it is helpful that you were able to observe in this extreme case what you may encounter in milder forms among numerous children with developmental delays.

[ 13 ] So that we can cover today’s material and address the therapeutic and pathological aspects tomorrow, I would like to go through the individual cases today and conclude our discussion of them from an educational perspective tomorrow.

Dr. Steiner is now discussing the child who was briefly shown at the beginning of the class:

[ 14 ] You saw the boy earlier—the one who actually creates a mental image in people's minds: Why are we showing him, anyway? — Because that’s how it is; and if you get to know him only superficially, you’ll hardly see him as anything other than a friendly, approachable, good-natured boy who’s learning to draw just as other children do, who gives the kindest, most beautiful answers, and with whom you can talk for hours. Isn’t that so? Those who interact with him will know. You can’t detect anything unusual about the child and might perhaps say: “These anthroposophists are strange people after all—they send their children, who could serve as role models for other children, to a clinical-therapeutic institute for treatment.”

[ 15 ] The boy is now a kleptomaniac in an unbelievable way. The one-sided nature of his kleptomania is almost as if it were disconnected from the rest of his inner life. Yet this boy has the peculiar trait that the consciousness—which, I would say, is meant to radiate across all aspects of life that manifest in a human being—is virtually shut off during his kleptomaniacal acts. One clearly gets the feeling that he doesn’t know much about what he’s doing, even though—and I ask you to take this into account—he carries it out in the most sophisticated manner. He had to be caught red-handed when he attended school in Bern, and when he attended school elsewhere, it took a great deal of effort to catch him. He goes about things with extraordinary cunning, and he isn’t selfish in doing so. He is capable of simply giving away the things he steals in the most sophisticated way—or squandering them with friends—just to make them happy; he is capable of that. In the process, of course, a special form of not entirely conscious lying develops; for since he doesn’t know exactly—his consciousness doesn’t fully illuminate the individual events—what’s going on, he tells the most incredible tall tales about how he came by something he simply stole. He also demonstrates, in a rather clever way, how he “found” the things—how they were just lying there in those places—and tells a very long story about how he came to possess an item. Things really do happen in a mischievous, goblin-like way. If I understood correctly what Dr. Wegman told me, for a while one might have thought he had become a perfectly decent young man, until one day people noticed—they didn’t know he had taken anything—that something had disappeared from this pocket, something had disappeared from another pocket, so that, in a strange way, people found themselves in the situation where: one day their belongings were simply gone. These two facts stood side by side. On the one hand, there was the strange story of the dematerialization of objects at the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute; on the other hand, people knew from earlier: the boy had been expelled from every school; that was known from before. The objects had simply vanished. These were two facts that stood side by side. It is certainly an unpleasant thought to be suddenly compelled to consider that this might also happen to adults; such an institute currently has fifty-two people, and, after all, these and other people might be there—one knows absolutely nothing. All we know is that here a spiritualist has the opportunity to explain at great length that objects dematerialize. One could construct an entire theory about the dematerialization of objects.

[ 16 ] We now have the boy here, and I would like you to note how strongly compressed the structure of his head is here (at the temples) and how it spreads out here (toward the back). And the spiritual finding is that the organ regions of the astral body are exceptionally well developed, especially here on the left side; otherwise, you won’t notice much about him outwardly.

[ 17 ] Now, please be so kind as to bring in the other child. We'll discuss the treatment plan tomorrow.

The next child, a girl, is led in.

[ 18 ] Just look how sweet Lore is, how gorgeous she is. Look at Lore’s beautiful blonde hair. She’s the one with whom it was so interesting that the children were alone together for a short time. Sandroe and Lore had become close friends, and Sandroe (who was introduced here the day before yesterday) felt the need to fetch a pair of scissors. She prompted him to fetch the scissors—Sandroe is a good, obedient gentleman—he brought the scissors, and she cut her hair straight across with them. She is no philistine. Take note—and I’d like to emphasize this in particular—of her beautiful blue eyes; take note of her blonde hair, which has a very lovely lustrous sheen, and you’ll immediately get the impression that this child is very spirited, and exceptionally spirited in her behavior as well. She’s a sweet child, but she has a spirited side to her; she’s lively and also firm.

The girl bites her arm.

[ 19 ] She's just biting her robe.

[ 20 ] The child weighed just under four pounds at birth but was full-term and had completed its normal gestational period. It was breastfed for seven months. It learned to walk at one year of age. This is a relatively early, but not unusual, age for learning to walk. She also learned to speak at the right time. Her development appeared normal; by the age of one and a half, she had stopped wetting the bed, though she still wets herself during the day, but never at night. As you can see, the abnormality lies in the fact that the child already has a weak constitution in this regard, but that this weak constitution manifests itself only when the astral body is active and not when it is inactive. A year and a half ago, when she was three and a half years old—please note this: this point in time is exactly halfway through the seven-year epoch and is of great significance, just like the corresponding point in the second epoch between the ages of seven and fourteen—the child had headaches accompanied by a high fever, followed immediately by measles; she was predisposed to illness. Since then, the child has been particularly agitated; the mother, too, was ill with the flu at the same time and has been agitated ever since. You can see the parallel between mother and child. The child’s appetite is always poor, even though she is so robust and actually has a strong limb structure. As you know, the limb structure is not built up in its substance from food, but comes from the cosmos indirectly through breathing and sensory activity. This poor appetite, which impairs nutrition, must find an outlet in mental activity. She is lively and imaginative; she is not only restless physically but also in her thoughts; she demonstrates with her eyes that her imagination does not originate in the head but comes from the limbs. The head organization is very weak. The limb organization is particularly strong. Her imagination comes from the limbs.

[ 21 ] She sometimes has restless dreams. What is not mentioned here, but must still be taken into account, is that one must now clearly keep in mind how the child dreams—whether she dreams before waking up or after falling asleep. As is the case here, the dreams that occur after falling asleep have been taken into account. But the child will also reveal very interesting things if one encourages her to “tell her dreams little by little.” It is the waking dreams that will be exceptionally interesting in this child when recalled, and one must have her recount them.

[ 22 ] These are the cases I wanted to present to you. We will have a lecture tomorrow at 8:30, and we will discuss the treatment approach then.