Psychoanalysts have long been interested in applying psychoanalytic understanding within educational settings to support the development of very young children. Many programs have explored this area, notably the Hampstead Nursery and the Hanna Perkins School in Cleveland.
Why do early childhood educational settings appeal to psychoanalysts? The classroom provides a unique opportunity to observe the development of the psyche in a naturalistic setting. The early childhood classroom also provides an unusual opportunity for developmental assists, because the young child's psyche is particularly open, malleable, and capable of being influenced by interpretation and interpersonal experience. Sometimes the developmental assist involves helping the child with some maladaptive affect/defense patterns or with some delayed structuralizations; at other times it involves supporting or developing a parental capacity or addressing an interactional aspect of the parent-child relationship.
Over the past ten years, I have initiated and continued to direct an early childhood project called the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood. The start-up funding and significant continued support for this independent, nonprofit charity has been supplied by a remarkable benefactor of psychoanalysis, Lucy Daniels Inman. The program has five components: early childhood intervention, child enrichment, community education and teacher training, evaluation and referral, and research.
The Early Intervention Program is designed for young children who are at risk or already showing signs of emotional difficulty. The program serves children from three through six years of age. Some children have significant biological vulnerabilities or syndromes; others have experienced particularly difficult events, such as parental death, divorce, physical or sexual maltreatment; still others are immersed in problematic family situations. Parents' capacity to participate in the treatment program is particularly important for the success of the work.
Children enter either a preschool class, with two teachers and up to eight children, or a kindergarten, with two teachers and up to ten children. The children participate in a challenging general school experience and are helped as needed with their emotional and social difficulties. Parents consult daily with teachers and meet weekly with a child analyst. The staff, which includes myself as clinical director, our education director, the child analyst parent therapist, and the teachers, meets weekly for a conference. This intensive study allows us to come to know each child sufficiently to be able to offer meaningful help.
Photo by Timothy Harsley
The main benefit of the program is to the children and their families. One concrete indicator of the benefit for the children is that although more than 75 percent had been dismissed by their previous school programs, 95 percent of our graduates are highly successful in inclusive first grade programs. There are numerous other benefits. Child analytic candidates have multiple opportunities for observation and participation. Many child analytic cases are generated from those children who require further help for internalized conflict. Occasional adult analytic cases are generated as well.
The Child Enrichment Program is designed for an unscreened, “typical” population of three- and four-year-old children. The teachers in the Child Enrichment Program draw on their psychoanalytic understandings, applying them to enhance the social and emotional development of the children in their classrooms. This approach recognizes that the distinction between normality and pathology in early childhood is artificial; all children are engaged in a complex self-construction in which they will benefit from sensitively offered developmental assistance.
As with the therapeutic program, the major benefit of the Child Enrichment Program is to the children whose emotional and social development is strengthened. The presence of both a “normal” and a “therapeutic” nursery on the same site, with more than seventy children in total, supports rich observational experiences for trainees. The Child Enrichment Program also allows us to have a school of significant size that serves all children, providing a school spirit and an integration into community life that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.
On most Thursday evenings through the year, parents and teachers come to the center for presentations and workshops on a broad ranges of topics. The presentations generally offer psychoanalytic developmental perspectives, such as on emotional development in infancy, separation, childhood sexuality, mastering aggression, childhood fears and phobias, self-esteem, childhood loss, and divorce. Other presentations may cover such topics as autistic spectrum disorders and early manifestations of learning disabilities. Our child psychoanalytic community contributes most of the presentations, although other local distinguished professionals also participate. More than 1,500 parents and early childhood educators currently attend at least one presentation each year. Not only does this program impart knowledge to parents and teachers, but it also builds respect and good will for psychoanalysis.
We have a particular commitment to bring our approaches to teachers across our state and beyond. We are in the process of developing a teacher training program that we call ATTUNED, for Affective Teacher Training in Understanding and Nurturing Emotional Development. We hope that the ATTUNED program will allow us to reach tomorrow's educational leaders at a formative point in their careers. We have begun pilot training programs for student teachers and a year-long internship program for “master” teachers.
The ATTUNED program is a logical outgrowth of our work with “typical” groupings of children in our Child Enrichment Program. We believe that a period of intensive teacher training can convey enough of a psychoanalytic orientation to enable teachers to learn a new attitude toward children. This new attitude will orient the teacher to children's inner perspective and developmental needs. We hope to create a ripple effect that will assist thousands of children in important ways, as well as help demonstrate to the general public the value of a psychoanalytic view of development.
Donald L. Rosenblitt, M.D., is the clinical director of the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood. He is a child and adult psychoanalyst and a training and supervising analyst at the UNC-Duke Psychoanalytic Education Program.
The center offers a low-fee evaluation and referral service for any child age six or under. Last year we received more than 200 inquiries and completed more than fifty full evaluations. These consultations provide an important community service, provide a portal of entry for children into the Early Intervention Program, provide a source for psychotherapy and (very occasionally) psychoanalytic cases for our child psychoanalytic and allied community, and are yet another source of goodwill toward psychoanalysis.
The center is conducting a longitudinal study of the children in the Early Intervention Program, with matched controls from the Child Enrichment Program. We are also studying the kinds of changes that occur during treatment. There is little documentation of the efficacy of a psychoanalytically based intervention in a therapeutic nursery, and we hope to help fill that gap.
Developing an early childhood center is a complicated task. In today's world, an agency must develop and maintain relationships with the many other public and private community groups that deliver early childhood services. Success requires community acceptance and support. Budget and fund-raising issues are ever-present. Even with our remarkable financial support from Lucy Daniels Inman, we still must raise many hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. On the clinical side, the teachers are under enormous strain and require much support, including hours of conferencing and supervision weekly. And, with occasional exceptions, each family that comes into the Early Intervention Program “moves into Lucy Daniels” with an extremely complicated situation that requires the utmost of thought and clinical attention.
Despite the difficulties, an early childhood center is a uniquely rewarding project. Children are profoundly helped. Psychoanalytic concepts are brought to life every day. The opportunities to extend and develop our psychoanalytic understandings in new directions are enormous. Child analytic cases are generated. Children and their families enter such treatments with understanding and commitment, and their treatments have been unusually successful. Finally, there may be no better forum for helping the general public benefit from and develop renewed appreciation for psychoanalysis.
Currently, the American Psychoanalytic Foundation is seeking funding for a project that would enable the foundation to assist communities hoping to begin their own version of an early childhood center. Let's hope that some will be farsighted enough to support such a venture, and that in the coming years many of our communities will be enriched by the presence of a psychoanalytic early childhood program.