Current Status of the Concept of Infantile Neurosis—Implications for Diagnosis and Technique

THE CONCEPT OF THE INFANTILE NEUROSIS HAS BEEN AN INTEGRAL part of psychoanalysis since Little Hans and the Wolf-Man (Freud, 1909), (1918). Anna Freud (1971) points out that in these early years of psychoanalytic discoveries the focus was on the neuroses of adult life and not on infantile psychopathology. The infantile neurosis, whether directly observed or reconstructed, was studied mainly for the light it could throw on the genetic and dynamic aspects of the adult neuroses and on differentiating their diagnostic characteristics from other types of psychopathology.

Infantile neuroses and the relevance of childhood experiences for the formation of adult disturbances were new findings. Those early studies also demonstrated the concordances between infantile and adult disorders in their motivation by conflict, their construction,