It is a privilege to be the first in line for an anticipated future series of contributions in this newsmagazine from the Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP). On behalf of child and adolescent analysis, child development and research, and child analytic training and practice, these articles are intended to enhance the status of child and adolescent analysis amongst the fellow members of the analytic community. This series is part of a plan to firmly plant the scepter of advancement and advocacy for the interest of children in the broader institutional underpinnings of our national organization.
Psychoanalysts have always been keen on development and the circumstances that shape its course. For this and other compelling reasons, there is unwavering fascination in all analytic encounters with the events of early life and their salutary or deleterious lasting after-effects. This profound fascination is visibly reflected not only in the enormous volume of published material on various aspects of early development but also in the impressive number of papers, panels, workshops, discussion groups and presentations during all of APsaA's scientific meetings, involving child and adolescent analytic treatment, clinical and observational research, along with developmental implications and technical applications, whether in pure clinical terms or in relation to our neighboring fields.
Here, I am reminded of a nine-year-old bright but disgruntled young man who felt strongly that “kids are no kidding matter.” He resented frequent instances when he felt dismissed, not taken seriously or pacified, and his wishes and views were taken lightly, or at times even openly ridiculed by adults. In psychoanalysis, we take children and their universe very seriously, not only regarding their needs and wishes but also with respect to the enormous treasure trove of insight and scientific information our field has unveiled and accumulated since the publication of “Little Hans,” Freud's well-known child case, celebrated as the first case of applied psychoanalysis in the history of our field.
Looking back at my own career, I am able to trace the course of this ever-expanding arena of influence, the widening scope of interest, and increasing utilization of these findings in analytic treatment of children as well as in treatment and management of severe pathology in adults where specific trauma, deficit, vulnerability or unmet developmental needs are rooted
M. Hossein Etezady, M.D., is a child analyst in private practice in Malvern, Pennsylvania, certified in adult and child/adolescent psychiatry. He has been an APsaA member for four decades and associated with The Vulnerable Child Discussion Group since 1979.
early in the lives of these individuals and their families. I can also recall the considerable and gradual organizational and programmatic expansion that has come about within APsaA aimed at incorporating child analytic material and theoretical perspectives in our professional and academic engagements with adults, therapeutically or as preventive interventions in communities, institutions and families.
In 1969, as I was beginning to explore the practical implications of beginning my psychoanalytic training, coincidentally APsaA began exploring ways and means of social outreach by taking psychoanalytic intervention from the confines of the consultation room out to the community where vulnerable children and their families resided, attended school, or struggled to cope with formidable levels of deprivation, pathology and accumulative trauma. The Executive Committee of APsaA then established the Subcommittee on Social Issues, which was tasked to pursue this objective.
An immediate offshoot of this effort was the establishment of the Vulnerable Child Workshop, whose original members initiated the first regularly held discussion group focusing on children at risk. This was also intended to serve as an ongoing, long-term scientific event dedicated to highlighting the clinical work and research activities of child analysts. In 2011, the Executive Council designated The Vulnerable Child as a permanent discussion group embedded in the organizational structure of APsaA, where contributions of child/adolescent analysis and child advocacy could be highlighted within an organization where the majority of the members were adult analysts.
APsaA's Vulnerable Child Discussion Group made its most recent presentation this past January, when it embarked on its 46th year of continuous activity. During the first 40 years, Theodore B. Cohen chaired a Vulnerable Child Study Group in Philadelphia and also chaired and organized these presentations at the meetings of APsaA as well as the Association for Child Psychoanalysis. For many years, this was the lone voice and later the dominant feature representing child analytic work at APsaA meetings. I have had the good fortune of maintaining 36 years of uninterrupted participation, initially as reporter, contributor, and then co-editor of The Vulnerable Child series publications, and for the past 16 years as the co-chair, first with Cohen who stepped down as the chair in 2009 after 40 years, and currently with Mary Davis, a child analyst and a graduate of the Chicago Institute who is the only trained child analyst currently residing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Today, The Vulnerable Child is no longer the sole voice of children or even a dominant child-based feature at the national meetings, thanks to widespread interest and unfailing enthusiasm that now dominates innumerable aspects of our scientific programming at APsaA meetings.
Having expounded the impressive enhancement of the status of child analytic research, infant observation, and child development amongst our colleagues and APsaA membership, I should also acknowledge the glaring absence of recognition and utilization of psychoanalytic tools in situations of obvious clinical needs of children and their families in the society at large and in routine practice of medicine and mental health services.
We have witnessed a pervasive tendency towards emphasizing shortcuts, quick answers and economizing when it comes to dealing with the intrapsychic universe of children as well as adults. Psychoanalytic treatment of children under present sociopolitical circumstances is hard to come by and receives negligible support from our traditional institutions. In nearly all cases, the main focus is on easy fixes and popular methods designed primarily to enrich the business community in a mad race to the bottom in quality and quantity. For psychoanalysis to survive and to continue to grow as a scientific method and a therapeutic tool and for us to maintain our status as members of the profession, we need to identify systemic elements that work against us, look into their origin and examine their context for the purpose of arming ourselves with means and methods that could address these concerns for the long term.
As a new member of COCAP I am pleased to join this organized effort by like-minded colleagues dedicated to the welfare and well-being of the young and vulnerable population that has so much to gain from the knowledge and expertise that psychoanalytic research, treatment, and preventive intervention can bring to this challenging arena. COCAP under its present leadership aspires to these ideals and looks, with a hopeful and enthusiastically expectant eye, to the future, when the well-being of our children will be still more paramount in our thoughts, actions and plans.