Opening of Discussion

Dr. Solnit Points to a Number of Central Questions and Currents that are important in assessing technical changes in child psychoanalysis since Anna Freud wrote “Normality and Pathology in Childhood” in 1965. He also refers to changes in the lives of families and their impact on the early experiences of children. He suggests that the tension between the environmental and the innate has been part of the productive aspect of psychoanalytic theory and technique.

In considering changes since 1965 it seems useful to survey how the technique of child psychoanalysis evolved during Anna Freud's life since it was so closely bound up with her own clinical and scientific development. Anna Freud's leadership was so central to the history of child psychoanalysis that one can follow the parallel in theory and technique as she conceptualized them when she was a young teacher in Vienna and consulting with a group of teachers. While engaged in this work she was deeply involved in the psychoanalytic world at a most dynamic and formative period. She has described the seminars in which both candidates and graduates participated; previously there had been no seminars for candidates for there were only candidates being analyzed by Freud and therefore no teachers. Aichhorn's work with delinquent adolescents influenced some of Anna Freud's discoveries about adolescence; this was important for technique since she had to devise innovative ways to broaden the base of child analysis to include these children, previously considered unsuitable for psychoanalysis. At the same time she learned about early development from the Edith Jackson nursery, which served some of