Ahsan Abulfazal’s Reviews > A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis > Status Update

Many features of the personality are based to some degree on inheritance.
Heredity determines the upper limits of abilities and when they are normally going
to increase or decrease. For example, it determines whether a man could possibly be
a great musician or mathematician (and chess playing should be included here as
well), and at what age he will be able to have complete sexual relations.
Environment, however, determines what he actually does. In other words, heredity
determines possibilities, and environment determines how closely these are
approached. But to spend too much time asking which is more important in real life
is as misplaced as asking: “Which is more important for strawberries and cream, the
strawberries or the cream? Do the berries float in the cream, or does the cream
surround the berries?”

There is no proof that environment cannot change some of the so-called inherited qualities of the mind. Nearly every human ability can be improved by proper training, and the opinion that a disability is “inherited” does not mean that the sufferer should give up. The study of the glands in years to come is going to be very important for changing those things we now regard as inherited, just as psychiatry is now becoming more and more important for changing those qualities
we regard as being due to environment. Therefore, instead of asking what is due to heredity and what is due to environment, we should ask rather, “Which qualities can be changed with our present knowledge, and which cannot?”