Scientific Proceedings—panel Reports—Classical Forms of Neurosis in Infancy and Early Childhood

This panel supplements the discussion on Problems of Infantile Neurosis presented at the New York Psychoanalytic Society, May, 1954. Lucie Jessner introduced the panel by referring to case studies in the literature of carefully analyzed neurotic children, and to the Arden House Symposium, 1954, which Ernst Kris chaired. Jessner said that the topic "infantile neurosis" allows for several lines of approach: first from the reconstruction of the past in analyzed adults, and second from the study of children's acute neuroses. She mentioned the two groups of neurotic manifestations in early childhood: (1) transient hysterical, phobic, compulsive reactions seen in the course of normal child development, subsiding when a further step in maturation is reached; (2) less transitory disturbances that lead to an impairment of ego development, totally or partially, by restricting, distorting, or crippling certain ego functions; the conflict is at least partially internalized. As analysts, we are interested in the genesis of a disturbance, and look backward as well as forward. She thought this panel promised to integrate the wealth of knowledge accumulated in the last decade through careful observation of children and through longitudinal studies.

Julius Richmond presented a paper on "Some Direct Observations of Disordered Behavior in Infants." From his experience as a pediatrician, he studied the complexity of the parent-infant interaction and their influence on the direction of development. His paper was based on observation of clinical material, mostly of infants from six months to one year of age. He prescribed the view that clinical observations such as those made by Spitz,