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When I think of elementary school children, I see them rushing and tumbling at recess, balancing on railings, climbing, sliding, swinging with zest, chanting their rhymes, sucking lollipops, comic books in their hands, tearing around chasing one another. I hear the sound of roller skates on the pavements, hopscotch chalked on the sidewalks, the girls skipping rope to chants such as
Eager-faced boys are off to high adventure and explorations, with canteens dangling from their belts, some of the more fortunate ones proudly clutching fishing poles. Amid the sounds of laughter and shouting they are seemingly oblivious to the adults around them.
These images lead me naturally to considerations about the activity of the latency child. The topic of activity covers such a broad range that I shall focus on the perceptual-motor activities of latency children. I shall try to exemplify some of the ways in which motility affects the ego and superego operation and the vicissitudes of the drives in the so-called normal latency period.
Psychoanalytic literature has covered extensively the subject of motility in the preschool child (infancy to five and a half years) and has traced its course through the oral, anal, and phallic phases. Among the eminent contributors to this subject are Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud, Hartmann, Loewenstein, Kris, Mahler, and Mittelmann.