Chapter 4. From Pain-and-Fear to Love-and-Pain

In the three previous Chapters I have described first, the psychoanalytic method in its excellence and limitations. Next, I traced Freud's early discoveries about infantile sexuality and his theories about the development of children particularly in so far as it forms the background for pathological symptoms in adult life. In the third Chapter I outlined the sudden and unexpected development, largely due to the work of Freud and Abraham in the post World War I years. This transformed psycho-analysis from a method for investigating and treating nervous illness into a special branch of psychology, meta-psychology. A new, multi-dimensional and coherent conception of personality development took shape in terms of developmental phases and organisational series.

But I ended with a note of semi-apology for the living child who could not be found among the ponderous theories. I did however promise to remedy this defect by describing the developments between 1926 and 1946 which grew out of the direct analytic work with children, and especially the work of Melanie Klein with very young children.

Much of the impetus for this direct approach to the child had come from an unusal bit of work by Freud himself, reported in 1909 (S.E. X) and known to analysts as the case of “Little Hans”. This little boy of five, suffering from a phobia of horses but generally a healthy, intelligent and normal child, was not treated by Freud but by the child's father, who was acquainted with the findings of psychoanalysis, under Freud's close supervision. The clinical result was highly satisfactory, but left Freud very doubtful that such a treatment could be accomplished by many parents or by an analyst directly. It was only the development of modified technique by the three women I have mentioned, the so-called “Play-Technique”, that made the direct treatment of children by the rigorous application of the psycho-analytic method possible. While Anna Freud at first advocated only a partial application