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During the past twenty years the development of a specialized branch of child analysis has brought to a head a number of controversial issues the solution of which will influence analytic theory for some time to come. It was of course inevitable that clinical psychoanalysts should, sooner or later, begin to "specialize" in various branches of morbid psychology, thereby following the example of earlier colleagues who had "specialized" in different fields of applied psychoanalysis—anthropology, literature, folklore and the like. Indeed it is more than probable that as our knowledge of different varieties of mental disorder increases it will not be possible for the "general practitioner in psychoanalysis" to be equally competent in all branches of psychopathology. The apparent "all-round" ability he exhibits at present depends on the fact that our knowledge regarding the development of most psychopathological states, though accurate enough, is still rudimentary. Transference and other factors of technique apart, therapeutic results depend on the extent to which we apply sound analytic understanding; and we have just enough understanding of the main mental mechanisms common to all cases to produce some beneficial results. Up to the present, at any rate, there is no evidence that etiological fads or special systems of interpretation have any outstanding therapeutic virtue, still less that these isolated systems can be made the basis of a new metapsychology.