Chapter 7. Differences and Similarities between the Infantile and the Adult Neurosis with Some Comments on Prediction

The processes and changes described in Chapter 6 on the “Infantile Neurosis” make many contributions to the varying shape of the disturbances of childhood. Many other factors contribute in varying proportions to this ever-changing picture.

The period of latency, for example, usually introduces a pause in sexual development, which in most cases brings about a marked diminution of the intensity of the child's drives. There is little doubt that these inner economic rearrangements that take place favor some extremely important developmental steps. Latency facilitates, for example, the child's move from the attachment to the oedipal objects to an attachment to his contemporaries. Many of the conflicts may and will now be partly expressed in relation to the contemporaries and displaced onto them. The degree to which these processes are completed varies greatly from one child to another and partly depends on how far latency is interfered with by massive conflict situations of an oedipal and pre-oedipal nature. In most cases, in spite of these interferences, at least some of the usual latency achievements can be observed,