Present Trends in Handling the Mother-Child Relationship During the Therapeutic Process

There is a certain type of questions which is brought up for discussion in my child analysis seminar practically, with every case. Could not this child have been helped simply by guiding the mother? How far would a Child Guidance Clinic have solved this problem for the child? Would not group therapy for the child, or for the mother, or for both, be here indicated? Would not the mother be more efficiently helped by someone who is not her child's analyst?

These questions are all the result of the times, the attempt to help the child through preventive methods, through more intelligent early handling, through meeting the child's problems at a stage earlier than the one when the child is sent to analysis. The trend is now toward including the whole family in an effort to solve the child's problems, toward extending the therapy into ever-wider fields, toward grouping the children and mothers, so as not only to increase the numbers helped but because group therapy has a therapeutic value in itself.

These present-day trends are bound to affect child analysis. They have already succeeded in eliminating certain cases from analysis, especially many of the younger children; Child Guidance Clinics are able to sort out cases, and send on those for analysis which need more intensive treatment. There remains, however, a large group of cases which at present can only be helped through analysis. The persistent question raised in my seminar of whether the mother might not be more efficiently helped by someone who is not her child's analyst, is a proof that the interrelationship of the mother with the analyst remains a most difficult problem during the child's analysis.

Until the child can make itself partly independent of the mother, that is until it has reached latency, the mother's behavior toward the child and the home atmosphere she creates is all important for the success or failure of the analysis.

Managing the mother poses many problems: how far the analyst should take th