The Principal Task of Child Analysis

Even the most inveterate child analysts do not contemplate the problems of their work except in comparison with those in the mainstream of psychoanalysis of which, after all, their discipline is no more than a sub-speciality. It is for this reason that child analysis tended always to stay near to what is commonly called the classical model and to keep every modification of it at a minimum. It may also be the reason why I find it difficult today to discuss what I suggest as a principal task for child analysis without referring back to the parallel concerns of psychoanalysis in general.

Obviously, the tasks facing psychoanalysts from the beginning were multiple, no single one standing out as principal: to devise and constantly improve a technique of therapy for the neuroses; to modify it for the purpose of widening its scope; to extract from it a general theory of mental functioning; to apply the latter to a large number of disciples concerned with human beings. Except for a few individuals who tried and were able to cultivate all these aspects, the various members and institutions of the psychoanalytic movement made their own selection from them. Training Institutes gave precedence to the teaching of technique; qualified analysts, while treating the neuroses, reached out towards the therapy of the more severe mental afflictions; training analysts built their professional reputation on the quality of theoretical publications. The technical, clinical and theoretical contributions flourished in this manner in the various quarters. Only application of psychoanalysis to the humanities found a diminishing number of representatives and decreased gradually, at least within the teaching programmes.

As we all know, child analysis, despite far-reaching differences in governing conditions and in the human material to be dealt with, followed faithfully in most of these directions. As in the training for adult analysis, the subject of technique had first p