Education for Special Needs E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Steiner describes polarities of illness and courses of treatment from a comprehensive analysis. He considers many cases and gives indications on therapeutic exercises, diet and medicine, how the 'I' relates directly to the physical body, and spirit and soul need to be taken into consideration when making diagnoses. Revolutionary in its approach, the far-reaching perspectives of these lectures are a living source of inspiration to both professionals, parents and others seeking spiritual insight.

Leseprobe

EDUCATION FOR SPECIAL NEEDS

THE CURATIVE EDUCATION COURSE

EDUCATION FOR SPECIAL NEEDSTHE CURATIVE EDUCATION COURSE

Twelve lectures given in Dornach for physicians and special-needs teachers between 25 June and 7 July 1924

ENGLISH BY ANNA MEUSS INTRODUCTION BY ANNA MEUSS

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS CW 317

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of this publication by the estate of Dr Eva Frommer MD (1927–2004) and the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2014

Originally published in German under the title Heilpdägogischer Kurs (volume 317 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtamgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand transcripts, not reviewed by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the latest available (eighth) edition of 1995, edited by Paul G. Bellmann

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1995

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

The right of Anna R. Meuss to be identified as the author of this translation has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 451 3

Cover by Mary Giddens Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

Introduction, by Anna Meuss

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 25 JUNE 1924

Anyone wishing to educate children whose development is incomplete needs to be au fait with the methods used to educate healthy children. Study of symptoms and consideration of the substantial aspect of illness. Spirit and soul and how they relate to the hereditary principles in the inherited body. Synthesis in the neurosensory system, analysis in the metabolic system. Renewal of the human organism after the seventh year. Influence of the nature of the individual. Appearance of the third body; ripe for the earth. Significance of the fluid parts of the organism, the gaseous, the temperature-related.

LECTURE 2

DORNACH, 26 JUNE 1924

Superficial state of mind as symptom complex may be misleading, as evident from a speech by public prosecutor Wulffen. Thinking’s process of synthesis apparent in superficial state of mind. Expressions of will arise from analytical process. The cosmic ether as vehicle for thoughts. Living thoughts are involved in human development, particularly the neurosensory system; decomposition in this system is the process of ‘mirroring’. Nonsensical thoughts arising. Teachers’ relationship to thoughts that have life. Law of education—every level of existence in the child is influenced by the next higher level in the teacher. Example: attitude to the weak-willed. Understanding incarnation endeavours when knowledge of the human organization is weak or absent where the human organism is concerned. Morality, responsibility, conscientiousness, courage to make decisions and their significance for the teacher.

LECTURE 3

DORNACH, 27 JUNE 1924

The I relates directly rather than indirectly to the physical body, the astral body relates indirectly to the flowing light, to chemism, to cosmic life in general. Something inwardly physical, as in the eye, is grasped directly. Inability of I and astral body to pass through the organs results in epilepsy. Treatment of epilepsy is based on this insight. Medication. The organ as a thought that has been integrated in the right or the wrong way. Will uncertain as incarnation begins; acquiring morality. The moral defect—persistent symptoms. Causes of moral blindness. Kleptomania, its origins and transformation.

LECTURE 4

DORNACH, 28 JUNE 1924

Considering karma. At the embryonic stage, education is for the mother. Cases of epileptic or epileptoid mental abnormality. ‘Hysterical’ mentality in childhood—hypersensitivity, pain, powerful inner life, anxiety, depressive feelings, flowing out, enuresis—soreness of soul, releasing vapours, perspiration. The teacher’s state of soul and mood. Healing quality of slight shock, change of tempo when working; treatment for children who have no faith in themselves. For the teacher—deliberately entering into the essential nature of every child and not to depend on rules.

LECTURE 5

DORNACH, 30 JUNE 1924

Two polar opposite sequences of the human levels of existence. Paranoia in later life and a weak metabolic organization if protein is low in sulphur; excessive absorption and vanishing impressions if it is rich in sulphur. Degree of sulphurousness or iron concentration; consequences and treatment of the same. Wide variety of concepts and forms and how to develop a sense for this. Rhythmic repetition as a therapeutic element. Treating children tending towards compulsive ideas. Diet. Children living with difficulty or easily in the movement system and treatment for them.

LECTURE 6

DORNACH, 1 JULY 1924

Introducing a 9-year-old boy. Exact medical history—developmental data; looking at his form; relationship of upper to lower human being in terms of development and processes. Shape of head—front and back of head; cause and consequences of poor control over lower processes, respiration. Discussing preventative and immediate treatment—way in which stiffness is relaxed and disharmony can be corrected—eurythmy therapy, special-needs education, medical treatment. Humour, flexibility and enthusiasm as the teacher’s basic attitude in special-needs education.

LECTURE 7

DORNACH, 2 JULY 1924

Number of facts relating to mentality of the case considered in the previous lecture. Presentation of other sick children—boy aged 6¾. Ether body greatly adapted to model body, disharmony, relationship of brain to intestine. Treatment: eurythmy therapy and speech exercises. Child with seizures, especially on left side of body, later left-sided paresis; imperfectly developed model; significance of intestinal function; detailed discussion of treatment, educational attitude.

LECTURE 8

DORNACH, 3 JULY 1924

Presentation of sick children. Hydrocephalus—history, retaining the embryonic organization; maternal and paternal inheritance. Childhood states of life running over into later periods in life. Case of a boy with kleptomania. Presentation of a sulphurous child—history, mother-daughter relationship, significance of developing measles at 3½; need to observe dream life.

LECTURE 9

DORNACH, 4 JULY 1924

Cause of the 12-year-old boy’s kleptomania; treatment consists in teacher’s educational attitude—trust in his teacher. Spotting a child’s tendency to develop kleptomania early on, in his relationship to the world around him. Treatment: brisk eurythmy therapy; medication; talking about his actions at the right moment. Treatment for the child with hydrocephalus: reducing sensory stimuli; medication; significance of crisis in changing signs and symptoms. Case of a 30-year-old hydrocephalic individual. Treatment for the sulphurous child (lecture of 3 July): hydrotherapy; breaking a character trait and its significance. Need for teacher to have good relationship to genius of language.

LECTURE 10

DORNACH, 5 JULY 1924

Discussion of a 16-year-old boy with mental processes slowed down. Cause must be looked for in that organization of metabolism and limbs is not taking up the element that lives in the head; educational measures. Case of a 15-year-old boy with epilepsy, medical treatment and educational measures. Case of a girl with weak astral body, affected by episode in her 3rd or 4th year. General rules for teachers—esoteric courage, attention to little things; what proves a hindrance and how this can be overcome. Albinos, horoscopes, ascendance, essential nature.

LECTURE 11

DORNACH, 6 JULY 1924

Treatment for a 10-year-old girl with loss of memory, connected with growths in the nasopharynx mirroring excessive ether body activity in the pelvic region—evoke strong impressions, rhythmic repetition, medication and eurythmy therapy. Remarks concerning a kleptomaniac child. Treatment for a sleepy, retarded child—rhythmic repetition, tone eurythmy, medical treatment. About a boy who sees everything in colour—cannot reach outside world and lives in his astral body. Details of education for special needs for him. Influences of the stars as illustrated by horoscopes of the albinos; treatment for them. About thinking in the theory of metamorphosis and how to handle this; circle and point; taking up what is there, the cultural history of Jena in the case of Lauenstein.

LECTURE 12

DORNACH, 7 JULY 1924

Deepening Waldorf education to children called abnormal. Healing and education. The spiritual powers in mother’s milk that give form; the plant and its relationship to man; sickness and animal world. Getting a feeling for these things through personal development; preconditions for this; spiritual developments and reality of life; the substantially anthroposophical element as reality and as the basis for the Anthroposophical Society and the Goetheanum.

Notes

List of Course Members

Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Colour Plates

EDITOR'S PREFACE

Albrecht Strohschein, one of the people who initiated the course, wrote about the way the course came about in ‘The origins of anthroposophical education for special needs’ in Wir erlebten Rudolf Steiner, Freies Geistesleben 1956: ‘Rudolf Steiner did not wish to have a stenographer present, though if one of us could do stenography he would have no objection to things being taken down. Three people tried to do their best to take the lectures down.’ The text written up by those three individuals forms the basis for this edition. The main part are Lili Kolisko’s notes, and her original shorthand records of Lecture 3 to 10 are available in the archives of Rudolf Steiner’s literary estate.

The chronological table of medical lectures and discussions (over) offers an overview of Rudolf Steiner’s lecturing activities in this field:

Date

Venue

Occasion

21 March–9 April 1920

Dornach

First medical course (

Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine

) GA 312

26 March 1920 7 April 1920

Dornach

Q&A on Psychiatry Hygiene as a social issue (both GA 314,

Physiology and Healing

)

7–9 October 1920

Dornach

Lectures on ‘Physiological and therapeutic themes based on spiritual science’ (GA 314)

11–18 April 1921

Dornach

Second medical course, GA 313 (

Illness and Therapy

)

12–18 April 1921

Dornach

Eurythmy therapy lectures for physicians and eurythmists, GA 315 (

Eurythmy Therapy

)

26–28 October 1922 28 October 1922

Stuttgart

Anthroposophical Basis for the Practice of Medicine (GA 314) Lecture on eurythmy therapy (GA 314)

31 December 1923/ 1 January/2 January 1924 28 August 1923–29 August 1924

Dornach (various cities)

Discussions with anthroposophical physicians on Therapy (GA 314)

The Healing Process (GA 319)

2–9 January 1924

Dornach

GA 316 (

Understanding Healing

)

21–25 April 1924 21–23 April 1924

Dornach

Easter course, part of above (GA 316) Discussions with medical practitioners (GA 314)

25 June–7 July 1924

Dornach

GA 317 (

Education for Special Needs

)

8–18 September 1924

Dornach

GA 318 (

Broken Vessels

)

Summary of Medical Courses in English Translation (latest editions shown):

GA/CW 312

Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine

(SteinerBooks 2010)

313

Illness and Therapy

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

314

Physiology and Healing

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

315

Eurythmy Therapy

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2009)

316

Understanding Healing

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2013)

317

Education for Special Needs

(Rudolf Steiner Press 2014)

318

Broken Vessels

(SteinerBooks 2003)

319

The Healing Process

(SteinerBooks 2000)

INTRODUCTION

Returning to Dornach from the Summer School at Ilkley in 1923, Rudolf Steiner, Ita Wegman and others had an additional member in their party, a nine-year-old American boy called Sandroe. His parents had given him into Rudolf Steiner’s care and Steiner asked Günther Wachsmuth to look after him. Sandroe was admitted to the Institute of Clinical Medicine in Arlesheim, Switzerland, on 6 September 1923, and this marked the beginning of paediatric work at the Institute.

In the same year, 1923, two young anthroposophists—Franz Loeffler and Siegfried Pickert—went to work as teachers at the special-needs home and school Sophienhoehe in Jena, in central Germany. They were assured that they could work there on anthroposophical principles. This proved not to be the case, and so they joined forces with their friend Albrecht Strohschein to establish a new centre at a house in Jena called Lauenstein. They had practically no money but friends helped to find furniture, etc., and they were able to open their doors on 1 May 1924. Their will to help the children overcame all obstacles, though it was all far from easy.

Five months earlier, during the 1923/24 Christmas Conference in Dornach, the three of them had approached Rudolf Steiner, asking him about the karma of children with special needs. They were invited to attend the course for young doctors which was given in Dornach from 2 to 9 January 1924, and on 10 January Rudolf Steiner managed to find the time for a serious talk on education for special needs with them.

After the agriculture course in Koberwitz, Rudolf Steiner was then able to visit the Lauenstein centre on 18 June 1924. The children he saw there were discussed by him in the lectures in this book, as were some of the children who were then in Dr Wegman’s care in Arlesheim.

A small, carefully chosen group met for these lectures, which were fitted in wherever possible during very busy days in Dornach. A list of their names is given at the end of this volume.

Those were the beginnings of work and a movement which today have spread all over the world.

* * *

The lectures in this volume were given 90 years ago. The question a translator has to consider is whether to do a ‘historical’ translation, which would mean using the English of 90 years ago, or one that uses the terms which are generally accepted in the field today. Knowing that this volume is like a textbook, with the English edition providing the basis for training special needs teachers in many countries today, I have taken the latter course.

The terminology in this field has changed a great deal over the last 90 years, and in this particular instance I have used the present-day terms shown in the table below.

German term of 90 years ago

English term of that time

Present-day English term

minderwertige Kinder

inferior children

children in need of special care

schwachsinnige Kinder

mentally deficient children [feeble-minded in I Thessalonians 5:34]

children with learning difficulties

abnormale Kinder

abnormal children

children with anomalies/abnormalities

Bewusstseinsstoerung

disturbance of consciousness

mental disorder

Translators face a particular problem with the German term Empfindung as in Empfindungsseele, rightly translated as ‘sentient soul’. The term comes up in various forms and it is not always easy to render it with a form of ‘sentient’ or ‘sentience’ in English. The German verb empfinden can be rendered as ‘to be sentient of’, but that phrasing is generally difficult to handle in an English text. Translators have therefore almost always put ‘feel’ or ‘sense’ instead. I think it is important, however, to use ‘sentient’ or ‘sentience’ if at all possible, as that shows the link with the ‘sentient soul’ and ‘sentient body’ which Rudolf Steiner spoke of. I’ve tried to do my best in this respect.

As in my translation of Extending Practical Medicine, I have adhered to the paragraphing used in the German original and wherever possible also put an English sentence for every German sentence. Working as an interpreter I would often see the problems that arose when mixed-language groups studied together and the English paragraphing and sentences differed from the original.

I admire and respect the great work done in the field of special education based on the work of Rudolf Steiner and hope that this translation will prove helpful in this.

With my best wishes for your future endeavours,

Anna R. Meuss, Stroud, October 2014

LECTURE 1

DORNACH, 25 JUNE 1924

WELL now, my friends, we have quite a number of children whose development has not been complete and who need to be educated and, as far as possible, cured. Some of these children are here in the Institute of Clinical Medicine, and some are with you at the Lauenstein centre. We’ll organize our subject matter so that as far as possible it relates directly to practical application. And with Dr Wegman1 making the children who are here available for demonstration—which it will be permissible to do amongst ourselves—we will be able to consider some cases that will be right in front of our eyes.

Today I want to begin by considering the nature of such children. Anyone wishing to work with children who are not fully developed naturally must first gain insight, genuine and penetrating insight, into the methods used to educate healthy children. Everyone intending to work with these children would need to know this. For we must be quite clear in our minds that anything that may come up with children whose development has not been complete, children with special needs, is also subtly evident in an inner life that is said to be ‘normal’; one must merely be able to observe that normal inner life accordingly. One might say that every one of us has an ‘anomaly’ somewhere, in some corner of his or her inner life. Merely a minor flight of ideas or an inability to produce words at the right pace when speaking, so that the words either trip over themselves or the listener can take a walk between two words which the speaker is producing, or other irregularities of that kind that may also show themselves in the life of will and life of feeling—we note them, at least to a small degree, in the great majority of people. We shall have to say a few things later on about such irregularities, for they must be taken as symptoms by anyone who wants to pay attention, as a teacher or medically, to those irregularities, especially if they are major ones. We must be able to make studies of the symptoms just as physicians speak of symptoms in cases of sickness that allow them to identify the disease, perhaps also referring to a syndrome that gives an overview of the illness, though they will never confuse the nature of a syndrome with the actual substance of the disease.

In the same way, we should not take anything we observe in the inner life of a child who has not developed fully to be anything but symptoms. Psychographics, as it is called, is really nothing but a symptomatology. And when psychiatrists do nothing today but describe the anomalous mental phenomena that come under the headings of thinking, feeling and doing, this does not mean much beyond the fact that progress has been made in psychiatry in giving exact descriptions of syndromes. However, being unable to go beyond such psychographics, psychiatry does not permit one to penetrate into the substance of the diseases. We must enter into the substantial aspect of illness. The following will be useful to you in this respect, and I’d ask you to keep it in mind.

Imagine that here [Plate 1, centre] we have the human physical body as it presents itself to us as a young child is growing. We then have the inner life ascending from this physical human body, as it were, issuing from it. This inner life, which may indeed present as reflections of the child’s soul, may be normal or abnormal. Essentially we do not really have the right to talk about normality or abnormality in a child’s inner life, nor indeed in the inner life of human beings altogether, unless we look at everything that is in average terms ‘normal’. For a community devoted to the commonplace, the only accepted criterion is that anything which is ‘normal’ is average. And when this community considers something to be sensible or clever, everything which in the eyes of these stolid citizens is not a ‘normal’ inner life will be considered ‘abnormal’. Initially there is no other criterion. This is why opinions are so extraordinarily confusing if people then start to do all kinds of things, having established abnormality, thinking that they will help; but they are driving out a piece of genius instead. One altogether does not gain much from such labelling, and the first thing to happen should be that the physician or the teacher rejects such an assessment, and goes further than saying that something is clever or sensible according to the way people are habitually thinking. It is particularly in this field that there is most eminent need not to form an opinion but to look at things cleanly. For what, in fact, do we have there in human beings?

Leaving aside this inner life, which emerges only gradually anyway (with the most dubious teachers sometimes playing a part in it), we have another principle of spirit and soul here, behind the bodily aspect; this principle of spirit and soul comes down from spiritual worlds between conception and birth. That other inner life is not the soul life which does come down from the worlds of spirit and soul; it is something else, something which initially is not outwardly apparent to earthly minds. Let me draw it for you [Plate 1, yellow]. The whole of this descended soul life here takes hold of the body, a body built up according to inherited principles in successive generations. So if this soul life is such that it produces a diseased liver, if it takes hold of the liver substance, or if it finds inherited pathological elements in the physical and ether body, and this gives rise to sentience of illness, we do indeed have a case of illness. Any other organ or organ complex can also be wrongly involved in the principle which descends from the soul-and-spirit cosmos. It is only when you have this connection here, a connection between descended and inherited principles once this soul-and-bodily aspect has developed, that you will have—though largely just as a mirror image—the inner life that human beings have, usually observed as thinking, feeling and doing [purple]. This thinking, feeling and doing altogether exists only like mirror images, literally like mirror images, which are extinguished when we go to sleep. The soul life, which is actually permanent, is behind this; it descends, it goes through repeated lives on earth and sits within the organization of the body. How does it sit in there?

Let us first of all consider the human being in his threefold nature: nervous system, rhythmic system and the system of limbs and metabolism. You see, the neurosensory system, if we think it—I think we understand one another—thinking of the way in which it is mainly, but only schematically so, located in the head, we speak of the head system when referring to the neurosensory system; we can do so all the more in the case of a child, since the part which develops the neurosensory system comes from the head and acts into the whole organism. This system, this neurosensory system, is localized in the head. It is a synthetic system.

It synthesizes. What do I mean by this? It brings together all the organism’s activities or functions. You see, in a way the head has the whole human being in it. When we speak of liver function, and we should really speak only of liver function (the liver which I see is liver process that has set), this liver function is, of course, entirely within the lower body. But there is always a function in the head to correspond to any such functional situation. To make a diagram [Plate 1, right], it is like this. Here, let us say, is the liver function. And there is some activity or other in the human head or brain which corresponds to this liver function. Here, in the abdomen, the liver is relatively segregated from the other organs, from the kidneys, stomach, and so on. In the brain everything blends together, liver function blends with the other functions, so that the head is the great summer-up of everything that goes on in the organism. This synthesizing activity brings about a destructive process. The substantial aspect drops out.

Exactly as we have a synthesizing process in the head, so we have an analytical process in all the rest of the organism, especially in the system of metabolism and limbs. There everything is kept apart; in contradistinction to the head everything is kept apart. In the head, renal function and intestinal function go together; in the rest of the organism everything is kept apart. To continue with our diagram we may thus say that liver function, let us say, gastric function, are segregated here; in the head they merge into one another, it all flows together, everything is synthesized. This merging process—with substance dropping out at the same time, as if it were raining—is a synthesizing process in the head which essentially is the basis of all thinking activity. To enable human beings to think, to enable them to go outside and be active, the principle which comes from the sphere of spirit and soul must maintain the synthesizing function towards the head, and with this differentiate the substance of anything inherited, doing so by synthesis. As a result the differentiated inherited elements can be seen as a mirror. So you now have the following. When it happens in the head that on coming down the principle is organized synthetically, the head becomes a mirror, and the outside world is reflected in it, which results in the thinking we usually observe. We must therefore distinguish between the two thinking functions, the one that lies behind the observable world and builds up the brain—that is the lasting one—and the thinking function which is not anything real but is merely reflected and always extinguished when we go to sleep; it is lost unless we reflect on it.

Another part of the principle which descends from the sphere of spirit and soul analytically builds up the system of metabolism and limbs, builds up the organs which are segregated, having clearly distinguishable individual contours. So if you consider the whole body with its distinct individual contours, we have liver, lung, heart and so on in there, and the system of limbs and metabolism is also connected with them. The rhythmic system is not visible to us. Everything filled out with physical matter belongs to the system of metabolism and limbs, and that includes the visible parts of the brain; they, too, are metabolism. The principle represented by these organs, individually and analytically developed, underlies the whole of human life in the will, whereas synthetic activity is behind our thinking. Everything we have by way of organs is behind life in the will.

Let us now consider the following. Think of someone who is pretty well grown up. What has happened to this fairly adult individual as he went through life on earth? Let us say he reached the age of 7 and developed his second dentition; at 14 he reached sexual maturity; at 21 he achieved consolidation of life in the psyche. If we altogether want to understand childhood development, we must clearly distinguish between the body that a person is wearing, a body that has gone through second dentition, and a body worn by a child who has not yet had his second dentition. The particularly striking examples we have been given are going on all the time. The body is renewed year after year. We are all the time shedding things to the outside from our body; there is a centrifugal stream going out all the time, shedding the body. As a result the body is indeed fully renewed every seven or eight years.

Now you see, this renewal is particularly important around the time of second dentition, in about the seventh year. Why? Well, the body worn by the individual from birth to second dentition is really just a model which we accept from outside, from our parents; it holds the hereditary powers that have been developed in the child’s forebears. We shed this body at this time, over the first seven years. And what then? A completely new body develops. Anything there is to human beings after second dentition is no longer developed by hereditary powers but solely out of the descending sphere of spirit and soul, so that in terms of substance human beings have their inherited body only until second dentition, building up a new one based on their individual nature as they shed the old one. We really only have a body of our own from the time of second dentition. But the way this happens is that the inherited body is used as a model, and depending on whether the life in spirit and soul is strong or weak, this element of spirit and soul will find it easier to proceed in a more individual way against the inherited configuration, or it will be subject to the inherited configuration and has to give the second body a form which like the first body derives from the parents.

The things usually said in genetics are utter nonsense. In general, people simply let the laws of growth up to second dentition continue on in later life. But in reality heredity, as people see it, does not go beyond second dentition; after this the individual spirit takes over and creates the second body.

Especially with children we must distinguish between the inherited body and the things that show themselves in the individual body as a consequence of the inherited body. The individual body evolves gradually, and it is only this which we may call the genuinely individual body of a person. And you see, now, between the seventh and fourteenth year, we see the hardest work being done of which the individual spirit is capable—it will either overcome the powers of heredity as the individual goes through the process of second dentition and shows that he has become free of the hereditary powers or—and we can see this very clearly and, being teachers, must take note of it—the individual spirit is wholly subjected to the hereditary powers, to the principles in the model. In that case similarity to the parents due to heredity will persist beyond the seventh year. It is the individual spirit which is responsible for this, not the powers of heredity. When as a painter I am given something to copy and I make tremendous changes in it I cannot really say that the person who has given me the work to copy has produced my painting, and in exactly the same way we cannot say that we have inherited the characteristics we have from our seventh year onwards. This is something you must firmly have in mind, knowing how strong the individual spirit is in the one case or the other.

Between the seventh and fourteenth years human beings go through a process of growth and development that will as much as possible reflect the individual spirit which the human being has brought down with him. As a result human beings are relatively self-contained and separate from the outside world during this period. This is indeed the time which provides opportunity to reflect on the marvellous unfolding of individual powers. If human beings were to continue in this way, entering into later life with this development only, they would be dreadfully unresponsive to the world around them. But they are already developing their third body around this time, which will be in evidence when they reach sexual maturity. This, too, is developed with reference to the forces in the earthly environment. The relationship between the sexes is not the whole of it; it is merely because we take a materialistic view of things that it is given undue emphasis. In reality all relationships to the outside world that show themselves at sexual maturity are of the same kind. Because of this we should speak of ‘earth maturity’ rather than sexual maturity, and under this heading put maturity of the senses, of breathing, with sexual maturity a subsection. That is the real situation. An individual reaches earth maturity, takes in the foreign element, and gains the ability to be no longer unresponsive to the surrounding world. He is able to gain impressions of that world. Before, he was not impressed by the other gender, nor by the rest of the environment. So human beings are then developing their third body, and this is effective until the early twenties.

The principle which came down from the spiritual world had come to an end with second dentition. It had its effect for the first seven years, up to second dentition, and up to the twentieth year. It configured itself in the organs which then existed, and has made the human being mature individually and for earth. Now if an anomaly develops in the inner life and is reflected according to the structure of the organs, an anomaly which is conditional for the whole period of development, then there truly is a mental anomaly. But if an anomaly develops in the liver or some other organ once the individual has passed his twenty-first year, then this organ has reached a level of independence and detachment where the soul aspect of the will can maintain itself independent of this. This will be all the less the case the further we go back in a child’s age. In adults, where the organs do already have a particular trend, the inner life will be relatively independent, and a disease affecting an organ will not have such a powerful effect on the inner life; it may then be treated as a disease affecting one or more organs. In children, everything still influences everything else; a sick organ still influences the psyche, has a real effect.

You see, present-day diseases, usually diagnosed using present-day pathology, are the coarser kinds of illness. The more subtle forms are not really open to histology, being in the fluid part that exists in an organ such as the liver, for instance, in the flow or even the movement of gases in the liver. The warmth that an organ has is also particularly important for the inner life.

In the case of child, if there is a defect in the will we must above all ask: which organ, which anomaly in an organ, which disease of an organ relates to this defect in the will? That is the more important question.

A defect in thinking is not of such enormous importance. Most defects are really in the will; even if you have a defect in thinking you must consider carefully in how far the defect in thinking is one in the will. For if you think too fast or too slowly, the thoughts may be perfectly correct; it is merely that the will, which is involved in the ordering of thoughts, has a defect. You have to see to what degree the will is involved. You can really only speak of a defect in thinking when thoughts show deformation independent of the will, hallucinations. These are wholly in the unconscious when it comes to the attitude to the outside world; in that case the images people have are irregular themselves. Or we have something like compulsive ideas, and the fact that they are compulsive lifts them out of the will. But this is above all what needs our attention—if we have a defect in the will or a defect in thinking. The defects in thinking usually do already belong to the sphere of treatment per se. With defects in the will we generally have to do something in our educating of children whose development is incomplete.

But consider now how the whole essential nature of a person plays into their development. You can get a feeling for this from the things said about this development of a human being. Let us just take the first seven years of life; hereditary defects may be present, and this has mainly to do with genetics. But we should not look on hereditary defects in the horrific way in which it is done in modern science; we have them not by chance but as a karmic necessity. We chose the body which genetically has defects, though this is because we lacked knowledge when in the spiritual world. So if there are defective hereditary powers, then knowledge of the human organization was lacking prior to conception. The point is, we must get to know the human organism very exactly before we descend to earth, otherwise we can’t properly enter into it in the first seven years and are unable to transform it properly. The knowledge we gain between death and rebirth with regard to the internal organization is something beyond all measure compared to the little bit of knowledge that we gain from outside in physiology or histology today. That is really nothing. But the knowledge we have there, which then goes down into the body and is forgotten because it has gone down, does not turn to the outside world through the senses. This knowledge is something immeasurably great. But it suffers harm if we do not develop an interest in our surroundings in a life on earth or have been prevented from doing so. Think of a period of civilization where people are locked up in rooms from morning till night so that they cannot take an interest in the outside world. What is the effect of such a civilization? It would shut human insight off from the outside world. And when someone goes through death in this shut-off state and brings little by way of precondition with him into the spiritual world to get to know, take in, the human organism in that spiritual world which contains everything, such an individual will descend to earth with less knowledge than another who has developed an open eye for the world around him.