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Dr. Siegfried Bernfeld, Vienna: Criticism of the Manner in which Psycho-Analysis has hitherto been applied to Pedagogics.
The speaker intends not so much to level criticisms at the activity in this field as, instead, to point to a few important tasks which await workers. Up to the present those interested in pedagogics have applied those results of psycho-analysis which seemed adapted to further the interests they had at heart. If it is desired to apply the science of psycho-analysis to pedagogics, pedagogics must first be regarded psycho-analytically—in the widest sense of the word, pedagogy denotes the sum of the reactions of adult society to the fact of ontogenetic development. The attempt must be made to regard from an analytic standpoint the motives of education in general, the mental conditioning factors of the educational methods of the present day, the types of pedagogic ideologues, rationalizations and educationalist views, as has already been done successfully with other civilized institutions, e.g. religion, literature, etc.
This scientific task can be more fully considered. The attitude of pedagogues to practical questions requires correction on many points. The most important is that psycho-analysis gives us no occasion to regard childhood as a period of particular plasticity; it shows, on the contrary, that the younger the person the more he is bound by inflexible inherited and instinctual trends, the less he is accessible to influence. One of the main