Only under the pressure of painful experiences does the child gradually learn to impose restrictions upon his impulse and to accept the demands of society without conflict, and thus become social. The path which the child must traverse from the unreal pleasure world of infancy to the real world of the adult, must be traversed by the child in those few years during which he ripens to maturity. Genetically, the newborn child brings traces of the accumulated experience of his ancestors, but this endowment alone is not sufficient equipment for adjustment to the society in which he finds himself. He brings genetically determined physical and mental capacities. However, his total inherent capacities must be expanded through education and experience.
Man becomes civilized through experience and training.
The child achieves culturalization over time by imitation, internalization, incorporation, and identification. Without identification there are no values nor controls over primitive narcissistic demands. The child possesses inherent possibilities for adaption to society, and education as well as experience has a distinct function to perform in the development of these potentialities. Experience teaches us how to take care of ourselves, education has the further task of expanding this primitive adjustment to reality to such a point we are capable of adaption to the demands of a complex society. The task is to develop from a primitive state concerned almost exclusively with gratification of instinctual drives, to one capable of taking a place in society.