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About twenty years ago the suggestion that the training of every analyst should include child analysis was seriously discussed. Since every analytic case leads into the conflicts of childhood, and since every neurosis in an adult is based on a childhood neurosis, this idea seemed not without justification. The analyst who had had first-hand experience with children would be on less strange ground in analyzing adults. His understanding of the adult's unconscious would be increased and it would be easier for him to comprehend the strange character of the transference reactions. Since the unconscious is less concealed and seems to be less repressed in children we expected to penetrate to material of the very first years, which in adult analysis could only be concluded and reconstructed. However, this expectation was disappointed. The suggestion to analyze children was taken up only by a few analysts, but even these dropped the experiment after one or two cases. It was difficult for them to find any access to the child. The child neither talked of his current experiences nor seemed in the least interested in his past. He even brought far fewer recollections than the adult patient. And worst of all, the adult analyst felt helpless against the child's refusal to bring free associations.
In brief, the dissimilarities between the analysis of an adult and the analysis of a child are more striking than the similarities. The differences are obviously rooted in the conscious attitude of the child. The id of the child and of the adult are alike, but the ego of each is unlike. This unlikeness makes it necessary to approach a child differently from an adult.2
This necessity for a different approach becomes apparent from the beginning of the analysis. The child patient is often brought into