Looking Back--and Forward--at The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

The following (quite personal and idiosyncratic) review of The PSOC's first volume, published in 1945, highlights some aspects of then-current psychoanalytic thinking that have passed--or failed--the test of time. Two abstractions rise from the particulars of the volume's twenty-five chapters. First, those authors who respected the position of the founding editors--that is, that child psychoanalysis was both independent from related fields and, at the same time, dependent upon them--tend to have fared better than those who allowed their psychoanalytic theories(and sometimes personal rancor) to cloud their views of the facts on the ground. Second, many of the contributions in this first volume integrated an intrapsychic perspective with an environmental or social one. This gave the work of these authors a kind of vitality that is lost when psychoanalytic theory is used to promote adaptation and social conformity. Perhaps it is worth recalling Freud's (1900) opening to The Interpretation of Dreams: "Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta movebo" (If I cannot move the heavens, I shall shake the nether regions). Freud and The PSOC's founding editors knew very well how disturbing psychoanalysis could be to the Superos, the established order. The revolutionary potential of Freud's analysis of the human condition attracted some remarkable people to the field, most of whom believed that intrapsychic and social changes are intimately related to each other. We would do well to emulate their example; only such an integration will keep psychoanalysis alive in the twenty-first century.