The Application of Psychoanalytic Theory to the Treatment of the Mentally Retarded Child

The majority opinion within the psychoanalytic community has tended to be that an analytic approach to the mentally retarded is futile. It is generally felt that the problems in communication, the limitations in insight, and problems with ego synthesis mitigate against the use of this tool. Under the aegis of intellectual deficits, the retarded child has been shunted aside and offered only the most concrete of interventions. Moore in a review of changing concepts of the infantile neurosis suggested that “children with ego and libidinal defects, the intellectually retarded or those with organic defect do not respond to the usual analytic technique that has been devised for the infantile neurosis.”13 Leland and Smith claimed that the methods and theories of play therapy used with emotionally disturbed children of normal intelligence had been applied to retarded children, and that this application was ineffective. They ascribed the failure to essentially two basic problems: first, retarded children had inherent problems with communication which limited their ability to gain insight “through the usual methods,” and “their daily life experiences [did] not usually contain sufficient elements to permit them to utilize the play material traditionally available for the expression of their emotional problems;” second, the clinicians were at fault because “they expected verbal communications and all of the other trappings of play therapy which occur with the emotionally disturbed children who have normal intelligence.”11

The French existential analyst Mannoni is one of the few who have made an eloquent appeal for the psychoanalytic treatment of the “feebleminded” child. Mannoni views the mother-child relationship as the central source of conflict for the child. The feebleminded child