Panel Discussion1

Dr Arlow (Moderator): When I was thinking of how to introduce this Panel it occurred to me to say that it was the intention of the Programme Committee that after the colleagues of the convention had worked so hard and so long on different problems they would like to relax and have other questions and problems placed before a panel of our leading colleagues. I was going to compare it with a dessert at the end of a meal, to introduce some touch of humour; however, I am in no position to do so because our hardworking colleagues have not given up their determination to work out the problems with which they have been grappling all week. About half the questions that have been sent up to me concern the very topics around which we assembled originally, namely the Pre-Congress meeting on selection of candidates for training, and the main theme of the Congress, acting out. In addition, a few of the subsidiary panels which took place during this week have occasioned additional questions. I have had to make a selection and I hope that the members of the audience who submitted questions will not be disappointed if some of them are not brought before the Panel. Also it has been necessary for me to combine a number of the questions. Accordingly if your question is not asked in the precise form in which you presented it the fault is mine and I beg your indulgence.

Our first question is one of definition, and a good point of departure, I believe: How do you understand the concept of object constancy, and at what stage in the development of the child does this become a persistent quality of the child's mental functioning?

Miss Freud: How do we understand the concept of object constancy? May I say that this is a question for which I am quite well prepared because every visitor who has recently come to our Hampstead Clinic has asked it. It is evidently a concept which has caused a good deal of confusion recently in analytic thinking, introduced by people who approached it not