Panel Reports—Latency

Grace Abbate stated that it was her intention to do away with the concept that there was a quiescent period in childhood called latency. Normally not all the sexual energy goes underground. Very complicated psychic constructions and reconstructions go on during this period. The latency child who comes into treatment will be chronologically but not psychologically in latency. In treatment we watch him move into latency.

Elizabeth B. Kaplan presented a paper on "Reflections Regarding Psychomotor Activities During the Latency Period." She described the child in the early latency period as rushing, tumbling, balancing, climbing, sliding—displaying the joy of motor activity; a child involved in rhythmical, chanting, repetitive games and sports which foster peer relationships and which, if interfered with, give us a child who is "out of it," one with marred object relationships; a child idealizing adults of action—ball players, the active mother, firemen, etc. Her emphasis was on the repetitive, rhythmic activities in the normal early latency child which are transient for this period, as distinguished from pathological actions which have permanency and rigidity, such as tics, hyperkinetic and dyskinetic behavior. Besides aiding peer relationships and thus object relationships, these activities in the maturing organism play a part in the development of ego functions—writing, carpentry, learning to throw a ball, batting, sewing, etc. Special emphasis is put on the role these activities play in helping the latency child deal with his main task, the warding off of masturbation and incestuous fantasies. In other phases of development adults give help to children in handling their instinctual urges, whereas