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IN the preceding pages we have discussed the technique by which children can be as deeply analysed as grownup persons. We shall now go on to consider the problem of indications for treatment.
The first question that arises is: what difficulties are to be regarded as normal and what as neurotic in children—when are they simply being naughty and when are they really ill? In general, one expects to meet with certain typical difficulties, varying considerably in quantity and effect, which, so long as they do not exceed certain bounds, are regarded as inevitable accompaniments of the growth of the child. But for this very reason, we are, I think, inclined to pay too little attention to the question how far these everyday difficulties are to be regarded as beginnings and signs of serious developmental disturbances.
Derangements in eating, if they are at all serious, and, above all, manifestations of anxiety, whether in the form of night-terrors or phobias, are generally recognized as definitely neurotic manifestations. But a study of small children shows that their anxiety takes on very various and disguised forms, and that even at the early age of two or three they exhibit modifications of anxiety which imply the action of a very complicated process of repression. After they have got over their night-terrors, for instance, they are still for some time subject to disturbances of sleep, such as getting off to sleep late, waking up early, having a restless or easily disturbed sleep, being unable to sleep in the afternoon—all of which are found in analysis to be