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What Should I Tell the Kids?, a book for parents by a psychoanalyst is an outstanding addition to the growing list of “parenting” publications. It will also interest psychoanalysts who are concerned with the ongoing
controversy within our field regarding the wisdom of popularizing psychoanalytic knowledge.
Some of us argue that it is wasteful not to share, with the public at large, the information we have about such important aspects of infancy and childhood as identity formation, early object-relations, the development of ego functioning, and the origins of conflict. Those who uphold this position suggest that such information, properly disseminated, would be helpful not only to parents, but to educators, legislators, the clergy, matrimonial lawyers, and pediatricians. Shouldn't the people who have the most profound impact on the lives of children have information at their disposal that would allow them to make astute observations and judicious decisions?
It is difficult to dispute such a sensible point of view except for one thing, and that is the question of how well psychoanalytic theory translates for the lay public. Those of us who are psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists remember the long and arduous course of study and personal analysis that brought depth to our understanding of psychoanalytic theory. How are we to present aspects of our knowledge to parents, and other nonanalytically trained people without reducing and simplifying important ideas to the point of distorting their meaning.
We know from experience how easily this can happen, how often psychoanalytic knowledge, taken out of context, is misunderstood, trivialized, the end product bearing no connection to the original idea. The progressive movement in education earlier in this century produced a number of schools for children illustrative of this point. Certain educators, opposed to the repressive atmosphere of the post-Victorian era, saw in psychoanalysis the possibility of reaching