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Child psychoanalysis is a method of illuminating the child's view of himself that enables the child to liberate himself from many of the obstacles to psychological (intellectual, social and emotional) progress. Many of the insights, reconstructions and perspectives derived from the psychoanalytic treatment of children and adults have been translated and applied to child care and education. In this way psychoanalysis has been able to widen its influence and to make available some of the fruits of the psychoanalytic method which in its complete form is useful to only a small number of children.
For the past fifteen years the Yale Child Study Center has collaborated with paediatricians and teachers in a planned translation and application of psychoanalytic insights and formulations. The aim of these ventures has been dual: to distribute more widely for preventive use the translatable knowledge of psychoanalysis; and to sharpen and refine psychoanalytic formulations and concepts.
The utility of direct observation of children in their homes, nursery schools, the paediatrician's office, and in crisis situations has become accepted as an important contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of children, just as psychoanalytic concepts have been a fruitful source of guidelines for the care and education of children.
In this presentation the collaboration of a group of paediatricians with a child psychoanalyst over the past ten years will be surveyed in terms of the psychoanalytic concepts applied and in terms of how these applications have implied the refinement, refocussing or delimitation of certain psychoanalytic concepts and insights. These collaborative experiences have also had an impact on the individual paediatrician in terms of how he uses himself as an essential instrument for facilitating the psychological development of his patients. In this context paediatric care has been viewed as follows:
Comprehensive medical care of the child is defined as the preve