The Psycho 5 Year Old

This is actually a pretty humorous video. This is from a news clip interview of a 5 year old girl who takes part in talent shows and her mother. Through the whole video, the child is making hilarious faces at the camera. It turns out that she can see herself on a video screen in the studio and she is making faces in order to see them on the screen the same way one might make faces in the mirror.

The range of faces she makes is very wide, and it shows that by age 5, most children already have a very well-developed personality. Amazingly well-developed, in fact. Although the theory is controversial, some personality theorists say that the personality is formed in full by age 7. That is a bit of an overdraw, but I see what they are talking about. In fact, all adults with personality disorders have a disorder that has roots in childhood.

This does not mean that they are blameless, but they hardly chose their personality. I doubt if any of us did. Our personalities developed in the same way that our face and bodies did, as forces of nature and largely free of willfulness. Even the pathological structures of a personality disorder are best seen as the best defensive way that the child had for dealing with the life that they were thrown into. People deal with life the best way they can, and they build up the best defenses that they can logically think up. In that sense, even psychopathology has "rational" roots as the individual tries to carve an adaptive path in order to function best in whatever environment they find themselves in.