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IN regard to the adult the function of Psycho-Analysis is clear. It is to correct the unsuccessful course which his psychological development has taken. In order to do this it must aim at harmonizing his id with the requirements of his super-ego. In effecting an adjustment of this kind it will also put his now strengthened ego in a position to satisfy the requirements of reality as well.
But what about children? How does analysis affect a life which is still in the process of development? In the first place, analysis resolves the sadistic fixations of the child and thus decreases the severity of its super-ego, at the same time lessening its anxiety and the pressure of its instinctual desires; and, as its sexual life and super-ego both mount to a higher stage of development its ego expands and becomes able to reconcile the requirements of its super-ego with those of reality as well, so that its new sublimations are more solidly founded and its old ones shed their spasmodic and obsessive character.
At the age of puberty the child's detachment from its objects, which should go along with a heightening of its internal standards, can only take effect if its anxiety and sense of guilt do not overstep certain limits. Otherwise its behaviour will have the character of flight rather than of genuine detachment; or it will be unable to get away at all and will remain for ever fixated to its original objects.
If the child's development is to have a satisfactory outcome