Contributions of a Ghetto Culture to Symptom Formation—Psychoanalytic Studies of Ego Anomalies in Childhood

Our pilot efforts at systematizing psychoanalytic research permit only limited generalization at this time, viz., (1) psychoanalytic study provides data of depth and richness that are simply unobtainable in observational study; (2) such intensive and longitudinal psychoanalytic explorations provide options for definitive documentation of those ego functions which contribute to intellectual function/dysfunction; and (3) as the sample size extends to permit generalization, the analytic indexing of such data offers an empirical, if arduous, potentiality for differentiating between cultural and psychological determinants of varied behaviors.

While the observational study is most limited as a basis for generalization, one may conjecture, however tentatively, on a number of socially significant issues. I concur with Bloom et al. (1964) that if educational remedies are to be effective, even with the "nondisturbed" child, they must necessarily be academically revolutionary, i.e., with extensions of teaching methods that veridically relate to the experiential and motivational needs of this population. Ghetto children and their problems appear anything but homogeneous, and I suspect that one of the fundamental errors of remedial programs