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.
In a psychoanalytic annual of the calibre of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child one does not expect a mere collection of clinical accounts of child analyses. It has long been the editorial policy of the P.S.C. that papers should make some original contribution to theory or technique, and to include observational studies and research on childhood development and psychopathology. Nonetheless, one does expect the majority of the papers to be about children. It is, therefore, disconcerting to find that of 28 papers, only 1 contains detailed material from a child analysis; another 2 give fairly full accounts of adolescent analyses; 4 use briefer vignettes or summaries from child or adolescent analyses, and 4 describe psychoanalytic observations of children or some form of psychoanalytically oriented therapeutic intervention: a total of 11 papers about children or adolescents. A further 11 papers use material from adult analyses. The remaining 6 present no clinical material.
One must ask what this imbalance means. Is it a reflection of diminishing interest in child analysis on the part of either analysts or patients? Certainly there has been concern in both European and American training institutions about the dearth of 'good' child analytic cases, as well as some concern about falling numbers of candidates for training. Does it represent a shift of psychoanalytic interest from studying child development through child analysis to applying the findings gained thereby in work with adults? Certainly many analysts believe that their clinical work with adults is enhanced by the better understanding of developmental issues gained from child analysis. Since, in one sense, all psychoanalysis is about finding the childhood roots of present day problems, one may argue that every psychoanalytic paper will contain some reconstruction of childhood experiences or reference to childhood development. This line of argument leads, however, to a blurring of the distinction bet