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.
ERNEST JONES. Some Problems of Adolescence.
DR. SIEGFRIED BERNFELD. A Typical Form of Male Puberty.
AUGUST AICHHORN. Training in Reformatories.
MELANIE KLEIN. Infant Analysis.
DR. S. SPIELREIN. Three Questions.
ANNA FREUD. Hysterical Symptom in a Child of Two to Three Years.
1. Some Problems of Adolescence.—Jones explains that by problems he means here gaps in our knowledge, the “solution” lying in the pointing out of relationships, popularly known as Causes and effects. He wishes to consider what it is to become an adult, what forces promote or prevent this, and how successfully adulthood is ordinarily attained. In order to discover the true differences between the state of childhood and that of adulthood he compares the latter with the earliest period of childhood.
The more obvious differences are those of size and the like. Greater difference in intellectual development needs more thorough investigation than it has had. The test of intellectual age is incomplete so long as insufficient attention is given to emotional interference with intellectual function. Moreover, psychoanalysis has led to a greater respect for the intelligence of the child than has hitherto prevailed, for the young child manifests greater boldness of thinking, a critical, investigating desire for knowledge, which education may blunt and restrict rather than aid.
A real difference between the child and adult lies in the greater unification of psychic elements in the latter, so that he acts with his entire personality, while the child obeys the individual impulse uninfluenced by other strivings and considerations, producing an autonomous” complex activity” as in psychic disorders. The child has not yet learned to endure excitement without immediate discharge; that is, to interpolate an interval between excitation and motor or affective reaction. The achieving of ability to endure a greater amount of psychic pain has a great deal to do with the gradual submission of the pleasure—pain pri