Child Analysis in the Latency Period1 (1958)

The subject under discussion is the treatment of the latency child. I have been invited to refer to psycho-analytic treatment, and to balance this a colleague has been invited to refer to individual psychotherapy. I expect we both start off with the same problem: how to distinguish between the two? Personally I am not able to make this distinction. For me the question is: has the therapist had an analytic training or not?

Instead of contrasting our two subjects each with the other, we might more profitably contrast our two subjects with that of child psychiatry. In my practice I have treated thousands of children of this age group by child psychiatry. I have (as a trained analyst) given individual psychotherapy to some hundreds. Also I have had a certain number of children of this age group for psycho-analysis, more than twelve and less than twenty. The borders are so vague that I would be unable to be exact.

For me, therefore, this discussion should be one between colleagues who are doing the same work, but who are prepared for their work by various training schemes. We would not do well to argue here about the training schemes, though some of these (it will be admitted) are less adequate than others.

It does not surprise me when investigations show that psychotherapy and child analysis give very much the same appearance when written up, regardless of the school from which the therapist derives. If the therapist is suitable by temperament and is able to be objective and to become concerned with the need of the child then the therapy will become adapted to the needs of the case as these present themselves in the course of the treatment.

In this conference I believe we may leave out consideration of therapy based on the various attitudes that are at variance with our own, of which the following would be examples: educational, moralistic, persuasive, punitive, magical, physical.

I must repeat, in order to make it clear, that I feel that there