Childhood

Barbara Low. Education and Mental Health. National Health, May, 1926, Vol. XVIII, pp. 411-413.

This article, based upon a course of lectures for teachers given in London during February and March, 1926, begins by pointing out the striking difference between the creative energy and free emotion of the very young child and the human being's later development, which so normally is characterized by loss of capacity and mental activity. It goes on to ask what explanation can be found and what method of education, if any, can be adopted to effect some more advantageous condition of affairs. An explanation, one at least which covers many of the problems involved, is to be found by a psycho-analytic study of the individual, and by the same process guidance is afforded towards a more productive educational system. Two main considerations are then dealt with: first, the effect of unconscious emotions (carried over from the family relationships) operating between pupil and teacher: secondly, the influence of these emotions on intellectual development. Without understanding on the teacher's part, it is impossible even to recognize the child's psychic situation, much less deal with it in any profitable manner. Further, the teacher's own unconscious trends are profoundly significant for the child, and may be helping to strengthen the latter's difficulties. Examples illustrating this are the teacher's helplessness in face of the pupil's 'stupidity' or 'slowness', which is regarded as an intellectual defect, the emotional causation being entirely unrealized: or, again, the teacher's own unconscious guilt which may make the question of exercising authority so difficult a one that he reacts either by tyranny or by putting himself on a level with his pupil. The immense gain in the development of a real science of teaching when psycho-analytic knowledge is available is pointed out, since without it we are unable to reach the whole personality Finally, the importance of adequ