You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Unperturbed by the cries of indignation and warning raised continually, since the appearance of Freud's Analysis of "Little Hans" and "From the Psychic Life of a Child" (Hug-Hellmuth), by the opponents of the Freudian school who believe that Psycho-Analysis is dangerous to children and robs them of their innocence, psycho-analytic science has continued its investigation of the subject of child psychology and has estimated the value for education of the knowledge acquired in this field.
From the analysis of the grown person we reap important facts as to the psychic occurrences of childhood and their results in later life; the immediate observation of children makes possible not only the corroboration of these revealed facts, but also an insight into the mechanism of the psychic phenomena of infancy and youth, into the preparation and the incidence of neuroses in infancy and into the development of character as dependent upon experience. Finally, the criticism of the personal writings of other than psycho-analytic authors, such as memories of childhood, the voluntary confessions of poets, diaries and letters of young people and mothers' daily memoranda of the spiritual development of their children, affords a valuable addition to the methods of research already specified.
Foremost in the first group are the works of Freud (10)(11) in which is once more set forth the rôle of sexuality in children and (10) the oral phase shown to be the earliest stage in the development of the Libido; next we