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.
Educators, though waking up, are not yet fully aware of the contributions of psychoanalysis to education. Progressive education has felt some of its influence through a seeping in of mental hygiene and child guidance ideas, but too often in diluted and adulterated forms. In most "advanced" schools, there is an amazing unawareness of twentieth century depth psychology in relation to the education and normal bringing-up of children. Only in the case of neurotic children is there felt to be any relation between psychoanalysis (or other psychiatric treatment) and educational procedures.
In the vast public school systems to-day, the old pedagogic psychology of the conscious mind—interest, apperceptive mass, motivation, drill, application—still holds the fort of learning. "Mental hygiene" and "child guidance", though now fairly current as terms, are still uncomprehended as concepts. Notwithstanding all the interest in these ideas, too few teachers are aware of the contributions of psychiatric—and even more so, of psychoanalytic—findings to pedagogy. Even fewer schools and principals are inclined to alter their organizations in conformity with the broader principles of the education of "the whole child".
Hence such a school as Dr. Anderson's at Staatsburgh-on-Hudson, though not, as he indicates, a unique experiment (there has been for the past eight years a school in Vienna, directed by Mrs. Dorothy Burlingham and Frl. Anna Freud, run on psychoanalytic principles), is so rare and admirable that it deserves careful attention from all educators. Not conforming to any one school of psychiatry, nr to any philosophy or method of education, it has been, for eight successful years, practicing the application of psychiatric principles to educational aims and procedures. The school presents a controlled environment in which children of varying ages, backgrounds and needs are given educational opportunities best suited to the most desirable growth of each individual. The orga