Attempts to organize analytical work with children from the standpoint of traditional psychoanalysis ran into real difficulties: children do not show interest in researching their past, there is no initiative to turn to a psychoanalyst, and the level of verbal development is insufficient to formalize their experiences in words. At first, psychoanalysts mainly used parental observations and reports as material for interpretation.
Later, methods of psychoanalysis were developed, aimed specifically at children. Freud's followers in the field of child psychoanalysis A. Freud and M. Klein created their own, different versions of child psychotherapy.
A. Freud (1895-1982) adhered to the position traditional for psychoanalysis about the conflict of a child with a social world full of contradictions. Her works "Introduction to Child Psychoanalysis" (1927), "Norm and Pathology in Childhood" (1966) and others laid the foundations of child psychoanalysis. She emphasized that in order to understand the causes of difficulties in behavior, the psychologist must strive to penetrate not only into the unconscious layers of the child's psyche, but also to obtain the most detailed knowledge about all three components of the personality (I, It, Super-I), about their relationship with the outside world, about the mechanisms of psychological defense and their role in personality development.
A. Freud believed that in the psychoanalysis of children, firstly, it is possible and necessary to use analytical methods common with adults on speech material: hypnosis, free associations, interpretation of dreams, symbols, parapraxias (slips of the tongue, forgetting), analysis of resistances and transference. Secondly, she also pointed to the peculiarity of the technique of analyzing children. The difficulties of using the method of free associations, especially in young children, can be partially overcome by analyzing dreams, waking dreams, dreams, games and drawings, which will reveal the tendencies of the unconscious in an open and accessible form. A. Freud proposed new technical methods that help in the study of I. One of them is the analysis of the transformations undergone by the child's affects. In her opinion, the discrepancy between the expected (from past experience) and demonstrated (instead of upset - a cheerful mood, instead of jealousy - excessive tenderness) emotional reaction of the child indicates that protective mechanisms are working, and thus it becomes possible to penetrate into the child's I. The analysis of animal phobias, the characteristics of school and intrafamily behavior of children presents a rich material on the formation of defense mechanisms at specific phases of child development. Thus, A. Freud attached great importance to children's play, believing that, being carried away by play, the child will also be interested in the interpretations offered to him by the analyst regarding protective mechanisms and unconscious emotions hidden behind them.
The psychoanalyst, according to A. Freud, must have authority with the child for success in child therapy, since the child's superego is relatively weak and unable to cope with the motives released as a result of psychotherapy without outside help. The nature of the child's communication with the adult is of particular importance: “Whatever we start to do with the child, whether we teach him arithmetic or geography, whether we educate him or subject him to analysis, we must, first of all, establish certain emotional relationships between ourselves and the child. The more difficult the work that lies ahead of us, the stronger this connection should be, ”A. Freud emphasized. When organizing research and corrective work with difficult children (aggressive, anxious), the main efforts should be aimed at forming attachment, developing libido, and not at directly overcoming negative reactions. The influence of adults, which gives the child, on the one hand, hope for love, and on the other hand, makes him fear punishment, allows him to develop his own ability to control his inner instinctive life over the course of several years. In this case, part of the achievements belongs to the forces of the child's I, and the rest - to the pressure of external forces; it is impossible to determine the ratio of influences. In psychoanalysis of a child, A. Freud emphasizes, the external world exerts a much stronger influence on the mechanism of neurosis than in an adult. The child psychoanalyst must necessarily work to transform the environment. The outside world, its educational influences, is a powerful ally of the child's weak self in the struggle against instinctive tendencies.
The English psychoanalyst M. Klein (1882-1960) developed her own approach to the organization of psychoanalysis at an early age.
The main attention was paid to the child's spontaneous play activity. M. Klein, in contrast to A. Freud, insisted on the possibility of direct access to the content of the child's unconscious. She believed that action is more characteristic of a child than speech, and free play is the equivalent of an adult's flow of associations; stages of play are analogs of the associative production of an adult.
Psychoanalysis with children, according to Klein, was based mainly on spontaneous children's play, which was helped by specially created conditions. The therapist provides the child with a lot of small toys, "the whole world in miniature" and gives him the opportunity to act freely for an hour. The most suitable for psychoanalytic play techniques are simple non-mechanical toys: wooden male and female figures of different sizes, animals, houses, hedges, trees, various vehicles, cubes, balls and sets of balls, plasticine, paper, scissors, an unsharp knife, pencils, crayons , paints, glue and rope. The variety, number, miniature size of toys allow the child to widely express their fantasies and use the experience of conflict situations. The simplicity of toys and human figures ensures that they can be easily incorporated into plot moves that are fictional or suggested by the child's real experience. The playroom should also be equipped quite simply, but provide maximum freedom of action. It requires a table, several chairs, a small sofa, several pillows, a washable floor, running water and a chest of drawers for play therapy. Each child's play materials are stored separately, locked in a specific box. This condition is intended to convince the child that his toys and play with them will be known only to himself and the psychoanalyst. Observing the various reactions of the child, the "flow of child's play" (and especially the manifestations of aggressiveness or compassion) is becoming the main method for studying the structure of the child's experiences. The uninterrupted course of the game corresponds to the free flow of associations; interruptions and inhibitions in games are equivalent to interruptions in free association. A break in play is seen as a defensive action on the part of the self, comparable to resistance in free association.
A variety of emotional states can manifest in the game: feelings of frustration and rejection, jealousy of family members and accompanying aggressiveness, feelings of love or hate for a newborn, pleasure to play with a friend, confrontation with parents, feelings of anxiety, guilt and the desire to fix the situation.
A prior knowledge of the child's developmental history and the symptoms and impairments he or she may have will assist the therapist in interpreting the meaning of the child's play. As a rule, the psychoanalyst tries to explain to the child the unconscious roots of his play, for which he has to show great ingenuity in order to help the child realize which of the real members of his family the figures used in the game represent. At the same time, the psychoanalyst does not insist that the interpretation accurately reflects the experienced psychic reality, it is rather a metaphorical explanation or an interpretive sentence put forward for trial. The child begins to understand that there is something unknown (“unconscious”) in his own head and that the analyst is also participating in his game. M. Klein gives a detailed description of the details of psychoanalytic play techniques using specific examples. Thus, at the request of her parents, M. Klein conducted psychotherapeutic treatment of a seven-year-old girl with normal intelligence, but with a negative attitude towards school and poor academic performance, with some neurotic disorders and poor contact with her mother. The girl did not want to draw and actively communicate in the therapist's office. However, when she was presented with a set of toys, she began to replay her troubling relationship with her classmate. It was they who became the subject of the psychoanalyst's interpretation. After hearing the therapist's interpretation of her play, the girl began to trust him more. Gradually, with further treatment, her relationship with her mother and her school situation improved.
Sometimes the child refuses to accept the therapist's interpretation and may even stop playing and discard toys when he hears that his aggression is directed at his father or brother. Such reactions, in turn, also become the subject of interpretation by the psychoanalyst.
Changes in the nature of the child's play can directly confirm the correctness of the proposed interpretation of the game. For example, a child finds in a toy box a stained figurine that symbolized his younger brother in a previous game and washes it in a basin from the traces of his previous aggressive intentions. So, penetration into the depths of the unconscious, according to M. Klein, is possible with the use of play techniques, through the analysis of anxiety and defense mechanisms of the child. Regularly telling the child-patient of interpretations of his behavior helps him to cope with the difficulties and conflicts that arise. Some psychologists believe that playing is healing in and of itself. So, D.V. Winnicott emphasizes the creative power of free play versus game. Cognition of the child's psyche with the help of psychoanalysis and play techniques expanded the understanding of the emotional life of young children, deepened the understanding of the earliest stages of development and their long-term contribution to the normal or pathological development of the psyche in adult life. Children's psychoanalyst J. Bowlby considered, first of all, the emotional development of children. His attachment theory is based on a synthesis of modern biological (ethological) and psychological data and traditional psychoanalytic ideas about development.
The key idea of Bowlby's theory is that the mother is important not only because she satisfies the child's primary organic needs, in particular, satisfies hunger, but most importantly, she creates the child's first feeling of attachment. In the first months of life, the screams and smiles of the child guarantee him maternal care, external safety and security. An emotionally protected child is more effective in his exploratory behavior, paths of healthy mental development are open to him.
Various disorders of the primary emotional connection between mother and child, “attachment disorders”, pose the risk of personality problems and mental illness (eg, depression). Bowlby's ideas found application immediately and starting in the 1950s. led to a practical reorganization of the hospital regime for young children, which made it possible not to separate the child from the mother. R. Spitz emphasizes that the relationship between the child and the mother at a very early age has an impact on the formation of his personality in the future3. Very indicative of a psychoanalytic approach to research and developmental correction
in childhood, there are such concepts as "attachment", "safety", the establishment of close relationships between children and adults, the creation of conditions for the establishment of interaction between children and parents in the first hours after birth.
The position of E. Fromm on the role of the mother and father in the upbringing of children, on the peculiarities of maternal and paternal love was widely known. Mother's love is unconditional: the child is loved simply for what he is. The mother herself must have faith in life, not be anxious, only then can she convey to the child a sense of security. "Ideally, maternal love is not trying to stop the child from growing up, not trying to assign a reward for helplessness." Father's love is for the most part conditioned love, it is necessary and, importantly, it can be earned - by achievements, fulfilling duties, order in affairs, meeting expectations, discipline. A mature person builds images of parents within himself: "In this development from mother-centered to father-centered attachment and their final synthesis is the basis of spiritual health and maturity." Representative of psychoanalytic pedagogy K. Buttner draws attention to the fact that the sphere of family education, traditional for psychoanalysis, is supplemented and even enters into competitive, contradictory relations with the system of institutional, non-family education. The influence of videos, cartoons, games, the toy industry on the inner world of children is constantly growing, and often it can be assessed as sharply negative. F. Dolto, a representative of the Paris School of Freudianism, examines the passage of symbolic stages of personality formation by children5. In her books On the Side of the Child, On the Side of the Teenager, she analyzes numerous problems from a psychoanalytic point of view: the nature of childhood memories, the child's well-being in kindergarten and school, attitude to money and punishment, upbringing in an incomplete family, the norm and pathology of parenting. -child relationship, in vitro conception. Child psychoanalysis has had a significant impact on the organization of work with children in the educational and social spheres, on work with parents. On its basis, numerous early intervention programs have been created, options for therapy of the relationship "parent-child", "father-mother-child" for parents and children of "risk groups". Currently, there are many centers for psychoanalytic therapy for children. However, according to one of the prominent representatives of this trend S. Lebowici, “to this day it is not easy to determine with precision what exactly is psychoanalysis in a child” 2. The goals of modern long-term psycho-analytical therapy of a child are formulated in a very wide range: from eliminating neurotic symptoms, alleviating the burden of anxiety, improving behavior to changes in the organization of mental activity or the resumption of the dynamic evolution of mental developmental processes.
QUESTIONS FOR SELF-TEST:
1. Name the motives underlying human behavior according to 3. Freud.
2. Describe the structure of personality and its development in the process of ontogenesis. What are the prerequisites for the emergence of a person's internal conflict?
3. Why can psychoanalysis's approach to understanding mental development be characterized as preformist?
4. Using the Freudian model of psychosexual development, try to explain the behavior of an overly punctual and tidy person; prone to swearing and bragging; a person who constantly strives to evoke sympathy and self-pity.
5. How was the psychoanalytic approach transformed in child psychoanalysis (goals, methods, ways of correction)?
EXERCISE 1
Read an excerpt from the work of 3. Freud "On Psychoanalysis", highlight in the text specific concepts for psychoanalysis, key provisions characteristic of this approach, paying attention to their formulations. “The relationship of a child to his parents is far from free from sexual arousal, as direct observations of children and later psychoanalytic research in adults show. The child considers both parents, especially one of them, as the object of his erotic desires. Usually the child follows in this case the promptings of the parents, whose tenderness has very clear, albeit restrained in relation to its purpose, manifestations of sexual feelings. The father, as a rule, prefers the daughter, the mother over the son; the child reacts to this, wanting to be in the place of the father, if it is a boy, and in the place of the mother, if it is a girl. Feelings arising in this case between parents and children, as well as depending on the latter between brothers and sisters, are not only positive, tender, but also negative, hostile. The complex that arises on this basis is predetermined for imminent repression, but nevertheless it produces a very important and lasting effect on the part of the unconscious. We can
suggest that this complex with its derivatives is the basic complex of any neurosis, and we must be prepared to meet it no less valid in other areas of mental life. The myth of King Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother, is a little changed manifestation of infantile desire, against which the idea of incest subsequently arises. Shakespeare's creation of Hamlet is based on the same incest complex, only better hidden. At a time when the child is in possession of a basic complex that has not yet been repressed, a significant part of his intellectual interests is devoted to sexual issues. He begins to ponder where the children are from, and learns from the signs available to him about actual facts more than the parents think. Usually, interest in childbearing issues is manifested as a result of the birth of a brother or sister. This interest depends solely on the fear of material damage, since the child sees only a competitor in the newborn. Under the influence of those partial drives that distinguish the child, he creates several infantile sexual theories in which the same genitals are attributed to both sexes, conception occurs as a result of food intake, and birth is due to emptying through the end of the intestine; The child views copulation as a kind of hostile act, as violence. But it is precisely the incompleteness of his own sexual constitution and the gap in his information, which consists in ignorance of the existence of the female genital canal, that makes the child-researcher stop his unsuccessful work. The very fact of this child's research, as well as the creation of various theories, leaves its mark on the formation of the child's character and gives content to his future neurotic illness.
It is completely inevitable and completely normal that a child chooses his parents as the object of his first love choice. But his libido must not fixate on these first objects, but, taking these first objects as a model, must pass during the final selection of the object to other persons. Splitting a child from his parents should be an inevitable task so that the child's social position is not threatened. At a time when repression leads to a choice among partial drives, and subsequently, when the influence of parents must diminish, great tasks lie ahead of the task of education. This upbringing, undoubtedly, is not always carried out as it should at the present time. Do not think that by this analysis of the sexual life and psychosexual development of the child, we have moved away from psychoanalysis and from the treatment of neurotic disorders. If you want, psychoanalytic treatment can be defined as a continuation of education in the sense of eliminating the remnants of childhood ”(Freud 3. On psychoanalysis // Psychology of the unconscious: Collection of works / Compiled by MG Yaroshevsky. M., 1990. S. 375).
ASSIGNMENT 2
Look through books, periodicals on psychology of recent years, select the work of a foreign or domestic psychologist, the author of which is an adherent of the psychoanalytic approach.
Read, paying attention to the conceptual apparatus.
What aspects of mental and personal development does the author consider
the main ones?
Indicate those practical problems of mental development, education and upbringing that are proposed to be solved in the context of psychoanalytic theory.
Give your own example of a current practical situation of this type.
What do you consider valuable from what you read, what seemed new, what is dubious or incomprehensible?
Prepare a thesis report.
Additional literature:
1.Zesharnik B.V. Personality theories in foreign psychology. M., 1982.S. 6-12, 30-37.
2. Obukhov Ya.A. The importance of the first year of life for the subsequent development of the child:
(Review of D. Winnicott's concept) // School of Health. 1997. T. 4. No. 1. S. 24-39.
3. Fromm E. Psychoanalysis and ethics. M., 1993.
4. Yaroshevsky M.G. History of Psychology. M., 1985.S. 329-345, 377-397.
Foreword. Formation and development of child psychoanalysis
The emergence of psychoanalysis was associated with the research and treatment of neurotic diseases in adults. However, the position put forward by Z. Freud (1856-1939) that the origins of neurotic disorders go back to childhood and are associated with the characteristics of the child's psychosexual development, inevitably led to the study of childhood neuroses. It is no accident that the founder of psychoanalysis paid close attention to the problem of the Oedipus complex associated with infantile sexuality and which, in his opinion, is the "core of neuroses." It is no coincidence that the treatment of adult neurotics presupposed the identification by means of psychoanalysis of patients' memories of various kinds of situations, events, experiences that took place in their early childhood and related to the first years of their life.
Z. Freud worked mainly with adult patients. Nevertheless, he sometimes had to turn to childhood cases. An illustrative example in this regard is his publication, Analysis of the Phobia of a Five-Year-Old Boy. (1909) , which recounts the classic case of "Little Hans". True, the very treatment of a five-year-old boy was carried out by his father, and Z. Freud only supervised this treatment and only once took part in a conversation with the child. However, the work he published helped to attract the attention of psychoanalysts to the analysis of childhood neuroses. Thus, the Hungarian psychoanalyst S. Ferenczi (1873-1933) in his work "Little Cockerel" described the case of the strange behavior of a little boy, Arpad, who showed an increased interest in chickens, feared a rooster and expressed excessive love and hatred for birds.
"Analysis of the phobia of a five-year-old boy" by Z. Freud and "Little cockerel" by S. Ferenczi served rather as a clear demonstration of the confirmation of psychoanalytic ideas, rather than a guide to the implementation of psychoanalysis of childhood neuroses. Neither work contained recommendations on how and how psychoanalysis can be used in the process of specific therapeutic work with children. On the contrary, they expressed such judgments that testified to the technical difficulties of psychoanalysis in the treatment of children and doubts about the possibility of its direct application to childhood neuroses.
Z. Freud emphasized that it was thanks to the father of "little Hans" that it was possible to induce the child to make certain confessions and that only the combination of parental and medical authority in one person, as well as the coincidence of tender feelings and scientific interests made it possible to use a method that "in such cases in general could hardly be applicable. " S. Ferenczi noted that in the case of Arpad “a direct psychoanalytic examination turned out to be impossible”, and he had to confine himself to asking the lady interested in this case to take notes, write down sayings and record the child's strange actions.
Nevertheless, Z. Freud believed that in the future, children's psychoanalytic sessions will become more important than it was at the initial stage of the development of psychoanalysis. In the work "The problem of amateurish analysis" (1926) he wrote about the value of children's psychoanalytic sessions for the development of theory and about the practical interest associated with the discovery that large numbers of children in their development go through one of the neurotic phases. At the same time, he emphasized that in the interests of the child "analytical influence must be combined with educational measures" and that this technique "still awaits its development."
Based on these ideas, subsequent psychoanalysts began a practical analysis of childhood neuroses, which was reflected, in particular, in the therapeutic activities of A. Freud (1895-1982), M. Klein (1882-1960), D. Winnicott (1896-1971 ) and other analysts. Publications A. Freud "Introduction to the technique of child psychoanalysis" (1927) , "Childhood in norm and pathology" (1965) , works by M. Klein "Psychoanalysis of children" (1932) , "Psychoanalytic game technique: its history and meaning" (1955) , book by D. Winnicott "Piggle: An Account of the Psychoanalytic Treatment of a Little Girl" (1977) had a noticeable impact on the formation and development of child psychoanalysis.
The daughter of the founder of psychoanalysis, Anna Freud, was one of the first who contributed to the formation and development of child psychoanalysis. As the youngest of six children of Freud, she not only stayed with him all her life, acting as a personal secretary and caring for her father, who had suffered from cancer for sixteen years, but also, having become a psychoanalyst, actively participated in professional activities. associated with the International Psychoanalytic Movement.
A. Freud had no medical education. After graduating from the Lyceum and receiving a pedagogical education in 1914, she worked as a teacher for five years. Without meeting any objections from her father, the young teacher had the opportunity to attend his lectures and attend some meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Having shown an interest in psychoanalytic ideas, in 1918-1921 she underwent a personal analysis with her father. Since 1918, she began to take part in the International Psychoanalytic Congresses. Having carried out an independent psychoanalytic study of a fifteen-year-old girl and made a report "The fantasy of beating in sleep and in reality", in 1922 A. Freud became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
In 1920, Freud gave his daughter a ring similar to the one worn by male analysts especially close to him, who are members of the "secret committee." In 1923, A. Freud opened her own psychoanalytic practice, and in 1924 she became a member of the "secret committee", replacing the closest associate of the founder of psychoanalysis, O. Rank (1884-1939), close circle of Z. Freud, left the committee. In 1924 she became the head of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute, where she began to lecture on child psychoanalysis. In the same year, she was re-analyzed by her father, in 1931 she became secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
In the summer of 1938, A. Freud, together with her father, left Austria and emigrated to England. After the death of Z. Freud, she contributed to the publication of his collected works. During the Second World War, A. Freud provided assistance to children affected by the bombing of London, opened an orphanage-nursery, carried out therapeutic and research activities. From 1944 to 1949 she was the General Secretary of the International Psychoanalytic Association. In 1947, in Hampstead, she organized training courses for specialists in the field of child psychoanalysis, in 1952 she headed the Hampstead Pediatric Therapy Clinic, which in 1984 was renamed the Anna Freud Center.
A. Freud has repeatedly traveled to the USA with lectures, took an active part in the work of the International Psychoanalytic Congresses. She was an honorary doctor of Sheffil (England), Vienna (Austria), Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Philadelphia (USA) universities. In 1973 she was elected Honorary President of the International Psychoanalytic Association. She died in October 1982. At the age of 86.
A. Freud is the author of numerous articles and a number of books, including "An Introduction to the Technique of Child Psychoanalysis" (1927) , "An Introduction to Psychoanalysis for Educators" (1930) , « I AM and protection mechanisms " (1936) , "The norm and pathology of childhood" (1965) ... Her ideological legacy is reflected in the collected works, published in ten volumes.
In her research and therapeutic activity, A. Freud proceeded from the fact that child psychoanalysis requires a special technique, since, unlike an adult, a child is an immature, dependent creature, the decision for analysis never comes from himself, he does not feel any disturbance and most often he has no consciousness that he is sick. Given these features, child psychoanalysis presupposes, first of all, a more or less long preparatory period, during which the child is “trained” for analysis (consciousness of the disease, trust, consent to treatment).
According to A. Freud, the analyst working with children must adhere to the following rules: he must not remain impersonal in relation to the little patient; instead of interpreting the patient's free associations and actions, the analyst should direct his attention to where "neurotic reactions are played out," that is, to the home environment surrounding the child; the analyst must take into account the fact that the external world exerts a stronger influence “on the mechanism of infantile neurosis and on the course of analysis” than in the adult patient; when working with a child, the analyst must be able to take the place of his self-ideal, and he should not begin his therapeutic activity until he is sure that he has “finally mastered this psychic instance of the child”; the analyst must have an upbringing authority, that is, analyze and educate, allow and forbid, "tear and re-tie."
In presenting her views on the specifics of child psychoanalysis, A. Freud opposed the position of M. Klein, according to which attempts were made to interpret the behavior of children from the point of view of a psychoanalytic approach to adults, taking into account sexual symbolism in its direct semantic meaning. Like the founder of psychoanalysis, she criticized the consideration of the play activity of children, refracted through the prism of a symbolic display of real sexual relations between parents, which was characteristic of M. Klein.
Unlike A. Freud, who believed that the analysis of a child is appropriate only in the case of infantile neurosis, M. Klein adhered to the point of view that psychoanalysis is acceptable for the development of normal children. Using psychoanalytic research and treatment methods, she developed a technique for child psychoanalysis based on play and early object relations. The child's free play was given the same importance as the free associations of the adult patient. Accordingly, symbolic meanings were seen behind the child's play actions, which in psychoanalytic interpretation coincide or, in any case, do not differ much from analytical work with adults. The child's actions related to play were deciphered and interpreted in terms of the manifestation of his sexual and aggressive desires: the collision of two toys with each other was viewed as an expression of the observation of intimate relationships between parents; overturning a toy - as aggressive actions directed against one of the parents. The playful analytical technique does not require a preparatory stage for analysis and makes it possible to better understand the object relationship between the child and the parents, primarily childhood experiences associated with the mother. According to M. Klein, the basis of child psychoanalysis should be based on the idea that satisfaction and frustration, libidinal and destructive impulses are formed at the earliest stages of a child's development, during the first three to four months of his life, when he has a perception “Good” and “bad” object (“good” and “bad” mother's breast). In the early stages of a child's development, what may be called "infant neurosis", characterized by depressive anxiety, manifests itself. The latter, according to M. Klein, "plays a vital role in the early development of the child, and the norm is the completion of infantile neuroses somewhere around the middle of the first year of life."
In the second half of the 20s and early 40s, there were ideological clashes between A. Freud and M. Klein, due to their different views on child psychoanalysis. These clashes were especially sharp in England, where M. Klein moved in 1926, and A. Freud - in 1938.
Echoes of these discussions have survived to this day among psychoanalysts who specialize in the psychoanalysis of childhood neurotic diseases. In any case, among modern psychoanalysts there is no consensus about the extent to which one should trust the child's play in the process of analyzing the child: whether his play reflects real life situations that indicate internal conflicts, or does it show resistance to the expression of conflicts; whether the child's play is a kind of transference or a favorite means of expression; whether he finds in it a means of "escape into illness" or the child's play in itself has a healing power.
Currently, some psychoanalysts adhere to the views of A. Freud, others share the ideas of M. Klein, and still others use everything of value that was in the teachings of these two representatives of child psychoanalysis. This anthology contains materials belonging to the pen of A. Freud, and it reflects, respectively, one of the positions associated with understanding the specifics of child psychoanalysis and its technique. In order to get a more complete picture of the possible approaches to considering the mental development of a child, the occurrence of mental disorders in children and methods of their treatment, the reader can refer to the works published in Russian and listed in the bibliography. However, it seems to me that acquaintance with child psychoanalysis should begin with reading the relevant works of A. Freud. That is why the anthology offered to the reader includes the research of this author as a necessary prerequisite for the further mastery of psychoanalytic knowledge in the field of therapy, upbringing and education of children.
Valery Leibin,
full member of the Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences,
Chief Researcher
Institute for System Research RAS
Section I
Early childhood psychoanalysis
Amnesia of Early Childhood Events and the Oedipus Complex
We all know very well that teachers treat psychoanalysis with a certain amount of skepticism and mistrust. But since you, the teachers working in the Children's Day Centers, nevertheless decided to listen to a short course of my lectures, you, apparently, in one way or another, came to the conclusion that a closer acquaintance with the new discipline could provide some assistance in your difficult work. After listening to these four lectures, you will be able to assess whether you were mistaken in your expectations and whether I was able to meet at least some of your hopes.
In a sense, I have nothing absolutely new for you. I would not achieve my goal if I tried to tell you about the behavior of schoolchildren or children attending Day Centers, since in this respect you are in a better position. A huge amount of material passes through your hands every day, clearly demonstrating the entire spectrum of phenomena: from children who are lagging behind in mental and physical development, intimidated, stubborn, deceitful, spoiled by abuse, to cruel, aggressive and prone to committing crimes. I'd rather shirk trying to read the entire list, as you will still find many gaps in it.
Nevertheless, even a good familiarity with all the variety of situations can hinder the comprehension of the true meaning of these phenomena. You, as well as school teachers and kindergarten teachers, must incessantly act. Life in the classroom requires constant intervention on your part: you must make comments, maintain discipline and order in the class, make sure that the children are not sitting around, give them advice and instructions. Your administration would be extremely unhappy if it suddenly occurred to you to switch to the position of a passive observer. It just so happens that, by virtue of your professional activity, you become acquainted with the countless visible manifestations of children's behavior, but you can neither cover the whole spectrum of these phenomena, nor trace the origins of children's behavior to which you are forced to respond.
Perhaps you cannot correctly evaluate and classify the material that you have, not so much because of the lack of the possibility of unhindered observation, but because such a classification requires special knowledge. Let us imagine for a moment that someone here is particularly interested in finding out why some of the children in a particular group suffer from visual impairments or rickets. He knows that these children live in squalid, damp houses, but only a physician can clearly explain how dampness affects the child's physical condition. Another may have focused on the dangers to which, because of their innate qualities, children of alcoholic parents are exposed; in this case, it is necessary to turn to the study of heredity. Anyone interested in the relationship between such phenomena as unemployment, housing shortage and child neglect should take up the study of sociology. In the same way, a teacher interested in the psychological determinants of all these phenomena, who wants to understand the difference between them and trace their gradual development with specific examples, can turn to psychoanalysis for information.
It seems to me that this enrichment of knowledge can provide you with significant support in your practice. There are two reasons for this. Day centers are the newest educational institution in Vienna. It is intended for children who, for one reason or another, after lessons are left without parental supervision. The idea of creating such centers is a preventive measure, an attempt to prevent the negative consequences resulting from a decrease in child care. They owe their existence to the belief that the development of defiant and antisocial behavior in the early stages can be relatively easily influenced in a favorable atmosphere of such centers, reminiscent of a school or home environment. Later, when teenagers who have grown up without parental supervision, have committed crimes end up in a correctional institution, it is much more difficult, and sometimes simply impossible.
However, at the moment, visiting the Day Centers cannot be compulsory. While school attendance is compulsory, the question of trusting your child in the care of the Center is left to the discretion of the parents. For this reason, Day Centers must constantly prove that their existence is not useless, gaining credibility in the eyes of every child and parent with their successful work, just as before the decree on the compulsory smallpox vaccination, parents had to be convinced again and again of the need such vaccination.
But Day Center workers point to another difficulty inherent in their position. In most cases, they have to deal with children who have already gone through the hands of various educators. They note that these children, at least in the beginning, do not adequately respond to themselves and their actions. They come with pre-established ideas and often express distrust, anxiety or disdain towards the teacher by their behavior. They developed this attitude as a result of previous communication with adults. In addition, the child's life in the Day Center is nothing more than an addition to his school life, and the Centers generally master more liberal, humane and modern ways of education than those that prevail in most schools. Thus, the school, demanding a certain standard of behavior from the child and instilling such a standard in him, often creates obstacles for the Centers in achieving the goal.
So the position of the workers of the Day Centers is far from being enviable. They are constantly faced with difficult tasks that require independent decision and intervention; and this is not to mention the fact that they are not the main and most important adults in a child's life.
School teachers may say to this that we are wrong, regarding their position as the most favorable. They also claim that most often they receive the baby too late; it is very difficult, for example, in the first grade of primary school to instill in a child a correct and serious attitude towards learning and towards teachers, if before he was only familiar with the carefree atmosphere of a kindergarten. They bring with them to school a model of behavior acquired in kindergarten and an attitude that is not acceptable in the school environment.
In accordance with the above, kindergarten workers deal with a group that has not yet been spoiled by upbringing, and therefore are in a more advantageous position. But even from them we, to our amazement, hear complaints that their three-six-year-old pupils are already mature personalities. Each child is endowed with character traits peculiar only to him and reacts to the actions of educators in his own way. With each child, the educator associates certain expectations, specific hopes and fears, each of them has his own predilections, each expresses envy and tenderness in his own way, demands love and rejects it. And there can be no question of the influence of the personality of the educator on a submissive, not yet formed being. The teacher deals with small personalities, complex and difficult to influence.
Therefore, teachers and educators - in schools, day centers or kindergartens - always find themselves in an equally difficult situation. It is obvious that personality formation is completed earlier than we imagined. To identify the origin of those characteristics of the child's character that cause so much trouble to the teacher, the researcher must turn to the period preceding his admission to educational institutions, to the first adults in the child's life, that is, to the period up to six years old and to his parents.
Perhaps you have a feeling that this simplifies the task. Instead of observing the behavior of older children in schools and day centers day by day, we will try to collect information about their experiences and memories of their early years.
At first glance, this is not difficult at all. You have always strived to ensure that the relationship with the children you trust is sincere and open. This will come in very handy now. By answering your questions, your child will be ready to tell you everything.
I advise each of you to make this attempt, but I warn you that you will get meager results. Children do not talk about their past, but they will willingly tell you about the events of the last few days or weeks, about the weekend, about their last birthday, maybe even about last year's Christmas. But here their memories are cut off, or, in any case, the children lose the ability to talk about them.
You might say that our belief that a child is able to remember his past is unfounded. It should be borne in mind that children cannot distinguish important events from minor ones. Therefore, you think it would be wiser and more productive to ask our questions not to a child, but to an adult interested in exploring the early experiences of his childhood.
Of course, I recommend that you use this second method as well, but I know that you will be surprised when you find that a friend who sincerely wants to help you has almost nothing to say. His more or less lucid memories with a few gaps will turn, perhaps, to the fifth or sixth year of life. He will describe his school years, perhaps even the house where he lived in the third, fourth and fifth years of life, names of siblings and dates; he may even mention a special event such as moving from one house to another, or some unusual event. At this point, the list will dry out before you discover what you are looking for, namely the signs of how his five-year development led to the formation of personality traits.
Of course, this is a suitable occasion for new disappointment. The events that we want to hear about, which play such an important role in shaping the character of an individual, relate to the most intimate experiences in his life. This is the experience that everyone keeps as the most intimate and, not allowing anyone but himself, shyly hides even from his closest friends. Given this circumstance, you should contact the only person who is ready to give it out for information. In other words, each researcher must study himself. Here it is about ourselves, and we must rely on the ability of a normal adult to remember the past, on our interest in this information and the desire to overcome all the barriers that prevent an individual from giving out his secrets to others.
Nevertheless, even if we approach this matter with all interest and attention and are extremely frank, the results will still be meager. We will not be able to shed light on the early years of our lives and collect an unbroken chain of memories from that period. We can associate events with specific periods of time, which can be completely different for different individuals. For some, this is the fifth year of life, for some - the fourth, for others - the third. However, up to this point in the consciousness of each of us, there is a large gap, darkness, against the background of which only some disordered and incoherent fragments stand out, on closer examination devoid of meaning and meaning.
For example, a young man does not remember anything from the first four years of his childhood, except for a short episode on the ship, where the captain in a beautiful uniform stretches out his arms to him to lift him over the parapet. A survey of other people showed that during the same period of time he experienced serious shocks and severe blows of fate. Or again, in the memory of a girl, whose early childhood was rich in emotional experiences, amid the confusion of events, only one clear memory remains: while walking in a baby carriage, she turns back and looks at the nanny pushing the carriage!
You will, of course, agree that here we are faced with an extremely contradictory set of facts. On the one hand, from our observations of young children and the stories of relatives about our childhood, we know that the behavior of the child at this stage of development is meaningful and active; he expresses his attitude to what is happening, in many respects manifests himself as a rational being. On the other hand, this period was erased from his memory, or, at best, left extremely scarce memories of himself. According to the testimony of school teachers and kindergarten teachers, after these early childhood years, a person enters into life as a fully formed personality. But still, the memory works as if during this period, when the child is most receptive and sensitive, when the complex development of his personality occurs, nothing worth remembering happened.
Until now, academic psychology has fallen into this trap. As material for their research, scientists took only that part of the mental life of an individual that is known to him, which inevitably led to an underestimation of the importance of the first years of life, which remained unknown to him.
The first attempt to resolve this contradiction was made by psychoanalysis. Having investigated the nature of the erroneous actions that a person commits in his daily life, forgetting and losing things or putting them in the wrong place, reading or hearing the wrong word, psychoanalysis has proved that such mistakes are not accidental. Previously, such cases were explained without much thought, as the result of carelessness, fatigue, or just an accident. Psychoanalytic studies have shown that, as a rule, we do not forget anything, except that we, for one reason or another, would not like to remember, although this reason is usually not known to us.
Similarly, in exploring gaps in childhood memories, psychoanalysis uses unconventional explanations. He argues that such a striking phenomenon would not have occurred without good reason. It is this darkness that envelops the first years of life, and the obstacles that arise in the path of everyone who makes any attempt to dispel it, that led psychoanalysts to the idea that something important was hidden here. Likewise, a burglar who stumbles upon a particularly sophisticated design of a lock finds that the effort he makes to break it will be richly rewarded; people wouldn't bother themselves so much to lock up something useless!
But at this point in my plans does not include an explanation of how psychoanalysis coped with this goal - to restore childhood memories. The description of the psychoanalytic method itself will take longer than we have at our disposal. We will leave its more detailed consideration and study for the case of another course of lectures. Now we are mainly interested in the content of the first five years of life, to the extent that psychoanalysis was able to restore it. I will only remind you that this restoration was accomplished by interpreting dreams and explaining the origin of mistakes made by both healthy people and patients suffering from neuroses.
The psychoanalytic reconstruction of childhood memories appeals to the earliest period of infancy, to the period when the child possesses only hereditary qualities inherent in him from birth - in other words, to the state in which we vainly hoped to find him at the moment of entering an educational institution. What we know about this stage of development is not impressive. Newborn babies are in many ways similar to baby animals, but in some respects they are in a less favorable position than young animals. The latter depend on their mothers only for a short period of time, at most a few weeks. After that, they turn into independent individuals, able to do without outside help. This is not the case with children.
The child is so dependent on the mother for at least a year that he would die the minute the mother stopped caring for him. But even after a year of infancy, independence is still far away. The child is not able to get food and livelihood, to protect himself from danger. As you know, it takes fifteen years, or even more, to completely free yourself from adult custody and become independent.
The fate of a child is inevitably determined by his long-term dependence on an adult, which also distinguishes people from individuals of the animal world. During the first year of life, the mother plays the most important role in the fate of the child, if only because her tender care is his only protection, this feeling remains for life. The child feels safe as long as he knows that the mother is nearby, and the child, with anxiety or indignation, demonstrates his helplessness when the mother leaves him. Without his mother, he would not have been able to satisfy his hunger; her presence becomes vital to him.
The first lecture on psychoanalysis for educators (1930). Text given from the publication: A. Freud Theory and practice of child psychoanalysis. T. I. M., 1999. S. 8–22.
The German Hort is here translated as "Children's Day Center". Its charter reads: “The centers are based on the kindergarten model, but are intended mainly for children from 6 to 14 years old. While kindergartens only accept children up to 6 years old, that is, preschool age, Hort centers are attended by those children whose parents go to work all day and who would have to spend their free time outside of school. Here at the Hort centers, they prepare lessons, participate in group games, and go for walks. "
Sigmund Freud believed that psychoanalysis is contraindicated for stupid or narcissistic people, psychopaths and perverts, and success can only be achieved with those who understand what morality is and seek to heal themselves. As the French researcher Elisabeth Rudinesco writes, if you take his statements literally, it turns out that such treatment is suitable only for "educated people who are able to dream and fantasize." But in practice, the patients he received at his home on Berggasse in Vienna did not always meet these criteria. T&P is publishing an excerpt from the book Sigmund Freud in His Time and Ours, which was published by Kuchkovo Pole Publishing House.
It is known that the patients who were accepted by Freud as "sick" before and after 1914 came to him for treatment to one degree or another under duress: these are all the women mentioned in Etudes on Hysteria, these are Ida Bauer, Margarita Chonka and many others. Under these conditions, the likelihood that the treatment would be "successful" was small, especially when it came to young ladies who rebelled against the established order in the family, in their eyes Freud appeared to be a lustful doctor or an accomplice of parents. Conversely, patients who came to Berggasse for analysis of their own free will were generally satisfied. Hence the paradox: the more the treatment depended on the patient's free desire, proceeded from himself, the more successful it was. And Freud concluded from this that the patient must fully accept all conditions, otherwise no psychoanalytic experience is possible. It is necessary to clarify that if the analysand wanted to become an analyst himself, then the treatment had much more chances to become therapeutic, then scientific, because the patient was directly involved in the matter itself. As a result, and without exception, the treatment, which was completely completed, that is, from the point of view of the person who turned to Freud, the most satisfactory - it was such a treatment that, on the one hand, was voluntary, on the other, it involved the patient's most active participation *.
* This is precisely because psychoanalysts did not want to compare their cases with those that Freud did not tell about, and they could not give a real assessment of his practice. All other mixed trends - supporters of Klein, Lacan, post-Lacanists, Ferencists, etc. - were satisfied with commenting; such is the canonical corpus, the story of Anna O. and the "cases" given in the "Studies of Hysteria", as well as in the famous "Five Cases", of which only three can be regarded as treatment. Thus, there was a free field for anti-Freudians, who used it to make Freud a charlatan, unable to cure anyone. The reality is much more complicated, and we have seen it.
Freud's patients were overwhelmingly Jewish, suffering from neuroses in the broadest sense of the word, which was attributed to him in the first half of the century: neuroses, sometimes mild, but often serious, which later would be called borderline states and even psychoses. A considerable number of patients belonged to the intellectual circles, often they were famous people - musicians, writers, creative people, doctors, etc. They wanted not only to be treated, but to experience what the word treatment is, conducted by its creator himself. At Berggasse, they mainly turned, having already visited other luminaries of the medical world of Europe - psychiatrists or specialists in all types of nervous diseases. And, no matter what they say, until 1914 they all faced the same notorious "therapeutic nihilism" so characteristic of the mental medicine of this era.
An enormous success in psychoanalysis was achieved by Freud's development of a system of interpretations of the affects of the soul, based on an extensive narrative epic, which was more involved in deciphering riddles than psychiatric nosography. On the couch of this original scientist, who also suffered from bodily ailments, surrounded by a luxurious collection of objects, touchingly beautiful dogs, everyone could feel like a hero of some theatrical stage, where princes and princesses, prophets, overthrown kings and helpless queens masterfully play their role. Freud told fairy tales, summarized novels, recited poetry, and revived myths. Jewish stories, anecdotes, stories about sexual desires hidden in the depths of the soul - all this, in his eyes, was perfect for giving modern man a mythology that would reveal to him the splendor of the origins of humanity. In technical terms, Freud justified this position, arguing that correctly conducted, that is, successful, analysis aims to convince the patient to accept the authenticity of a certain scientific construction, simply because the highest advantage is simply to reclaim the acquired memory. In other words, successful treatment is the kind of treatment that will allow you to understand the root cause of suffering and failure, to rise above them in order to fulfill your desires.
Freud saw eight patients a day, his sessions lasting 50 minutes, six times a week, sometimes for many weeks or even months. It happened that the treatment was delayed indefinitely, there were repetitions and failures. In addition, Freud received other patients for routine consultations, prescribed treatment, and conducted several sessions of psychotherapy. Usually he did not make any notes, doing the art of sofa. It was an introduction to the journey: Dante leads Virgil, as in the "Divine Comedy". If he recommended abstinence, then he never followed any principles of "neutrality", preferring "indecisive attention", which allowed the unconscious to act. He spoke, intervened, clarified, interpreted, got confused and smoked cigars without suggesting to patients what they reacted to in different ways. Finally, if an occasion arose, he recalled some details from his own life, mentioned tastes, political preferences, convictions. In a word, he himself was involved in the treatment, confident that he would overcome the most stubborn resistance. When this did not succeed, he always tried to understand why, while there was still hope for success. Sometimes he admitted tactlessness, informing his correspondents about what happened during the sessions that he conducted, and sometimes he read to some patients the letters he received, where they were discussed, while all this was supposed to remain confidential.
* The mathematician Henri Roudier calculated for me what was the state of Freud at different stages of his life. Before the First World War - in florins and crowns, then, since 1924 - in shillings and dollars. Note that all the "monetary conversions" proposed in order to determine the price of Freud's sessions and translate it into euros or dollars of the XXI century, have no scientific basis, and the authors, among other things, contradict each other: some it turns out 450 euros, for others - 1000, for others - 1300. Such calculations should by no means be taken seriously, they pursue the goal of presenting Freud as a fraud or greedy person. One can speak about his condition only by comparing him with other contemporaries who did the same thing as he did and came out of the same social class. Of course, Freud became rich when you consider that at the same age, his father lived in relative poverty.
Freud, day after day, summed up the accounts, kept notes in a special diary (Kassa-Protokoll) and in his letters talked endlessly about money. Between 1900 and 1914, his social status was equal to that of prominent professors of medicine, who, meanwhile, received patients in private. * He was wealthy enough, like all more or less prominent practitioners of his generation, and led the same lifestyle.
During the war, revenues collapsed - at the same time as the Austrian economy. But starting in 1920, he gradually recovered his fortune, accepting patients not only from the former European powers, ruined by the financial crisis and the depreciation of money, but also other psychiatrists or wealthy foreign intellectuals who came from the United States or wished to study psychoanalysis. Freud gradually became the analyst of analysts.
Whenever possible, he asked to pay for treatment in foreign currency. Over the years, he managed to place his savings abroad, to which were added quite significant amounts for copyright. If he earned less than a psychoanalyst living in New York or London, he was definitely better off than the German, Hungarian and Austrian followers, who were struggling with the collapse of the economy. In October 1921, inviting Lou Andreas-Salomé to come to Vienna because she had expressed such a desire, he wrote: “If you are breaking with your homeland because freedom of movement is being encroached on in the country, let me send you money to Hamburg. necessary for the trip. My son-in-law manages my investments in stamps there, as well as incomes in hard foreign money (American, British, Swiss), I have become relatively wealthy. And I would not mind if wealth gives me some pleasure. "
* At the same time in New York, the price per session was $ 50. Here are the notes of the economist Thomas Piketty on Freud's income, calculated at my request: “Freud was a successful doctor, which was not scandalous, given the very high level of inequality that characterized that time. The average income was between 1200 and 1300 gold francs per year per inhabitant. Today, the average income (excluding taxes) is around € 25,000 per year per adult. To compare the totals, it would be better to multiply the amounts in gold francs from 1900-1910 by a factor of about 20. Christfried Tögel credits Freud with an income of about 25,000 florins, which corresponds to 500,000 euros of annual income today. This, of course, is a fairly high profit, but also quite indicative for the highest level of the era. With constant inequality, this would correspond rather to about 250,000 euros in annual income today. "
For comparison, note that in 1896 Freud took 10 florins per hour; in 1910 - from 10 to 20 kroons per session; in 1919 - 200 crowns, or 5 dollars if the patient is an American (which is equal to 750 crowns), or a guinea, which is a little more than one livre sterling (600 crowns), if the patient is a poor Englishman. Finally, in 1921, he considered asking for 500 to 1,000 crowns, then settled on $ 25 * per hour, which did not prevent some patients from charging less overpriced amounts.
At times, he could not contain unfair and harsh anti-American sentiments, to the extent that he argued, for example, that his followers across the Atlantic were good only because they brought him dollars. Just one interlocutor, he frightened by saying that the Statue of Liberty can be replaced with another, which "holds the Bible in his hand." The next day, during the analysis, one of the students said that Americans are so stupid that their whole way of thinking can be reduced to a ridiculous syllogism: "Garlic is good, chocolate is good, put some garlic in chocolate and eat it!"
The fall of the Central European empires and the gradual predominance of American psychoanalysts in the international movement was experienced by Freud as a deep humiliation. He was tormented that all patients were forced to pay, and he was sympathetic to the idea that medical institutions should provide free care to the poor. The American idea of democracy, personal freedom and the rights of peoples to self-determination in general terrified him. “Americans,” he once said to Shandoru Rado, “are transferring democratic principles from politics to science. All should be presidents in turn. But they cannot do something. "
Freud always believed that psychoanalytic treatment is contraindicated for people who are stupid, uneducated, too old, melancholic, obsessively obsessed, suffering from anorexia or hysteria, albeit occasionally. He also ruled out psychoanalytic experimentation for psychopaths or perverts "unwilling to be reconciled with themselves." Since 1915, he has added to the category of "unanalyzed" those who are prone to serious narcissistic disorder, obsessed with the death drive, chronic destruction and not amenable to sublimation. Later, when Ferenczi invited him to undergo an analysis, he joked that he was talking about a man who is under seventy, who smokes, who has a cancerous tumor, nothing will help him. Freud also said the opposite - that psychoanalysis is intended to treat hysteria, neuroses associated with obsessive persecution, phobias, anxiety, depression, sexual disorders. And he added that success can only be achieved with smart people, who understand what morality is, and who want to be treated.
“Maniacs, psychopaths, melancholic people, narcissists also consulted other specialists who, like Freud, did not achieve successful results. But only Freud was accused both during life and after death "
In 1928, he quite clearly stated to the Hungarian follower Istvan Hollos, the initiator of the reform of psychiatric hospitals, that he hated patients with psychotic disorders. “I was finally convinced that I do not like these patients, they anger me because they are not like me, like anything that could be called human. This is a strange sort of intolerance that makes me completely unsuitable for psychiatry. I act in this case, like other doctors before us, in relation to patients with hysteria, is it not the result of the partiality of the intellect, which always manifests itself much more clearly, an expression of hostility towards “It "?"
Taking these statements literally, one can decide by believing the founder that psychoanalysis is suitable only for educated people who are able to dream or fantasize, who are aware of their condition, who care about improving their own well-being, with morality beyond any suspicion, who, by virtue of a positive transfer or antitransfer, are capable of curing for several weeks or months. Well, we know that most of the patients who came to Berggasse did not fit this profile.
* As an example, it can be noted that the Viennese architect Karl Meireder (1856-1935), whom Freud treated for ten weeks for chronic melancholy in 1915, set a kind of record by contacting fifty-nine doctors, whose prescriptions and other methods of treatment turned out to be completely ineffective. But only Freud was accused of not curing him.
In other words, since the turn of the century, there has been a great deal of contradiction between the guidelines for treatment that Freud advocated in his articles and his own practice. Realizing this, he corrected his theory, describing in "Introduction to Narcissism" and in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" cases, the therapeutic success of which he doubted in every possible way. And meanwhile, trying to resist nihilism, but under the pressure of financial necessity, always striving to challenge, he undertook to analyze "unanalyzed" people - in the hope that he would succeed, if not cure them, then at least alleviate suffering or change attitudes towards life.
These patients - maniacs, psychopaths, melancholic, suicides, libertines, masochists, sadists, self-destructive, narcissists - consulted other specialists who, like Freud, did not achieve successful results *. But only Freud was accused of all the abominations both during life and after death: a charlatan, a swindler, a money-lover, etc.
That is why it is very important to study in all details some of the treatments - of those that turned out to be the most unsuccessful and, on the contrary, completed. Let us first emphasize that out of all 170 patients received by Freud, no matter what they treated, twenty people received no benefit, and about a dozen abandoned him, so much so that they hated the doctor himself. Most of them turned to other therapists, on the same payment terms, without achieving better results. Today, no researcher can tell what the fate of these patients would have been if they had done nothing at all to get rid of their suffering. […]
After 1920, Freud could enjoy great happiness, contemplating the enormous success that psychoanalysis enjoyed on the other side of the planet. It was then quite clear that his business was moving forward, and yet he did not find satisfaction. Everything went as if he feared that, having abandoned his ideas, they would be accepted only in order to distort them. "Who will the bumps fall on when I'm not alive?" - he said to himself, thinking about all kinds of "deviations" that his theory has undergone through the fault of his contemporaries. Like most founders, Freud did not want to be a Cerberus guarding his discoveries and concepts, taking on the risk of erecting idolatry and foolishness into law.
In such and such a state of mind, he received patients from the victorious countries at Berggass, in particular the Americans, who paid him in foreign currency and who came to learn the craft of psychoanalysis and meet in person. In vain Freud was indignant, he was forced to admit that any treatment, frankly carried out in English with students who are ready to cooperate, brings to psychoanalysis a possible future, such as he had not even dreamed of. Therefore, he was forced to moderate his anti-American views and admit that other promised lands were opening up for his theory: France, the United Kingdom, the USA, Latin America, Japan, etc.
* Of Freud's 170 patients, there are 20 Americans, almost all from New York. Tadeusz Ames (1885–1963) met Freud in Vienna in 1911 or 1912. Monroe Meyer (1892–1939), a melancholic psychiatrist, committed suicide at age 47 with a sharp glass cut. Anti-Freudians accused Freud that he was to blame for this voluntary death, which occurred 18 years after Monroe's stay in Vienna. Leonard Blumgard remained an orthodox Freudian.
Abram Kardiner was born in New York and came from a family of Jewish tailors who came from Ukraine. In October 1921, a young doctor of thirty, he went to Vienna to be treated by Freud, as many of his compatriots would do: Adolph Stern, Monroe Meyer, Clarence Obendorf, Albert Polon, Leonard Blumgard *. Passionate about anthropology, abandoning dogmas, he was already practicing psychoanalysis when he was treated for the first time, on the couch with Horace Frink, regarding this experience as unsuccessful.
He met with Freud for six months, talked about his parents - poor migrants who fled anti-Semitic persecution: arriving in Ellis Iceland, looking for work, the death of his mother from tuberculosis when he was only three years old, prayers in a language he did not know , fear of unemployment, hunger, the appearance of a stepmother, who herself came from Romania and aroused in him a strong sexual desire. Kardiner talked about musical tastes, about the doom of his own Jewry, about Yiddish, then about anti-Semitism, his desire to become a great "doctor", about his interest in the communities of national minorities - Indians, Irish, Italians, about that notorious "melting pot" something similar to Central European.
Kardiner also recalled his teenage days. The stepmother had an underdeveloped uterus, which did not allow her to have children, which he was glad of. About his father, he said that he once cursed and hit his mother, whom he did not marry for love. In his memory, he retains the memory of the unfortunate woman who gave him life, but did not have time to grow up. It was under the influence of his stepmother that the patient's father was able to become a real husband, devoted to the family. After an unsuccessful love for a girl, followed by depression, Kardiner became interested in the study of medicine, thinking how he, the son of a Jewish tailor turned American, would become a brilliant intellectual, headlong into psychoanalysis and cultural studies. And yet he was tormented by anxiety, which made him vulnerable to any life's achievements.
He told Freud two dreams. In the first, three Italians urinated on him, each had a penis sticking up, and in the second he slept with his own stepmother. The cardiner was clearly the ideal "Freudian patient" - intelligent, dreamy, suffering from phobic neurosis, from a loving fixation on a stepmother who replaced his mother, a victim of an abusive father who married before leaving, by contract. But before his Viennese teacher, he did not bow in the least, he just wanted to go through this experience with him. Admiring him, he willingly challenged his interpretations.
Another was the case of Clarence Obendorf, who founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society with Brill and was treated at the same time as Cardiner. Freud despised him, considered him stupid and arrogant. Obendorf, on the other hand, turned out to be much more loyal to him than Kardiner, although very cautiously, and with good reason, he treated psychoanalysts' search for "primary scenes" wherever possible. He believed that the old-fashioned treatment was no longer suitable for new times.
* Clarence Obendorf (1882-1954) was an orthodox Freudian, hostile to its simplistic psychoanalysis. He wrote the first official work on the history of psychoanalysis in the United States.
On the very first day of the analysis, he told of a dream in which he was driven in a carriage drawn by two horses, black and white, in an unknown direction. Freud knew that the patient was born in Atlanta, in a southern family, as a child he had a black nanny, to whom he was very attached. He immediately expressed a startling interpretation of this dream, telling Obendorf that he would not marry, since he would not be able to choose between white and black women. After losing his temper, Obendorf argued about sleep with Freud and Kardiner for three months. He felt all the more humiliated because he was a venerable analyst, trained on the couch with Federn, and stopped interpreting dreams. According to Kardiner, he remained a bachelor, and Freud continued to despise him.
"If the analysand wanted to become an analyst himself, then the treatment had much more chances of becoming therapeutic, then scientific."
Freud was much more fortunate with Cardiner than with Obendorf. A sort of Danube prophetess, he explained to him that he identifies himself with the misfortune of his own mother, and this speaks of "unconscious homosexuality", that the three Italians from his dream are the father who humiliated him, and that the breakup with the bride repeated the initial refusal, which will no longer happen because he overcame it himself. Regarding another dream, Freud explained to Cardiner that he wanted to be subordinate to his father, so as not to "wake up the sleeping dragon." On two points - unconscious homosexuality and submission to the father - Freud was wrong, and the patient noticed this.
When six months passed, Freud judged that Kardiner's analysis was successful and predicted a brilliant career, exceptional financial success, happiness in love affairs, and he was absolutely right. In 1976, moving away from psychoanalytic dogmatism and leaving widespread Oedipianism and canonical interpretations of latent homosexuality or father's law, Kardiner recalled his time on Berggasse with delight: “Today, I would say, when I have a general understanding, that Freud brilliantly performed my analysis ... Freud was a great analyst because he never used theoretical expressions - at least then - and he formulated all his interpretations in ordinary language. An exception is the reference to the Oedipus complex and the concept of unconscious homosexuality, he processed material without interrupting everyday life. As for the interpretation of dreams, it was extremely insightful and intuitive. " It is necessary to add about Freud's mistake about the "sleeping dragon". “The person who substantiated the concept of transfer did not recognize it. He was missing one thing. Yes, of course, I was afraid of my father when I was little, but in 1921 the person I was afraid of was Freud himself. He could give me life or break it, and this did not depend on my father. "
This testimony is all the more interesting since Kardiner came to Vienna, since he considered his analysis with Frink to be insufficient. He, in any case, did not know that he himself was being treated by Freud, and the treatment was going on with great difficulty. Of course, Cardiner noticed Frink's aggressiveness, but he showed no signs of psychosis. A more dogmatic Freudian than Freud himself, Frink interpreted Cardiner's relationship with his father as a desire for Oedipus death. “You were jealous of him, jealous that he owned your stepmother,” he told him. This misinterpretation caused Kardiner's new flare-ups of anxiety and a legitimate desire to end the treatment. Not wishing to harm Frink, Freud rejected this intention. At the end of the analysis, he told Kardiner his concerns. He was no longer interested in therapeutic issues, he said. “Now my impatience is much less. Some obstacles prevent me from becoming a great analyst, and I suffer from them. By the way, I am more than a father. I do too much theory. "
In April 1922, when Kardiner told him that psychoanalysis could not harm anyone, Freud showed two photographs of Frink, one taken before analysis (in October 1920) and the other a year later. On the first, Frink looked like a man the Cardiner knew, and on the second he looked bewildered, haggard. Were these metamorphoses really the result of experiments on the couch? Cardiner doubted this more than Freud, who never managed to escape the nightmare of this tragic treatment, in which conjugal relations, adultery, psychoanalytic endogamy and misdiagnosis were mixed.
* Painful Fears and Obsessions by Horace Frink: Horace W. Frink, Morbid Fears and Compulsions, Boston, Moffat, Yard & Co., 1918.
Horace Westlake Frink was born in 1883. He was neither Jewish, nor the son of European emigrants, nor rich, nor neurotic. Gifted with an exceptional mind, he began studying psychiatry early and wanted to become a psychoanalyst. Suffering from manic-depressive psychosis from his youth, he was analyzed by Brill, then joined the New York Psychoanalytic Society, and a few years later published a genuine bestseller that contributed to the popularization of Freudianism across the Atlantic. * In 1918, he became one of the most famous psychoanalysts on the East Bank, suffering from bouts of melancholy and mania, accompanied by delusions and an obsessive desire to commit suicide. His life was divided in two: on the one hand, his legal wife Doris Best, from whom he had two children, on the other, his mistress Angelica Bijur, a former patient, a fabulously rich heiress who married the famous American lawyer Abraham Bijur, who was analyzed by him, and then at Tadeusz Ames.
The mistress hurried Frink to divorce, and he went to Vienna to undergo treatment with Freud and finally decide who would become the woman of his life. In turn, Angelica (Anji) also consulted with Freud, who advised her to divorce and marry Frink, otherwise he risks becoming a homosexual. In his patient, he diagnosed repressed homosexuality. In fact, he was fascinated by this brilliant man, calling him "a very sweet boy, whose condition has stabilized thanks to changes in life." He urged him to take Brill's place.
It was impossible for Frink to acknowledge such a diagnosis. Meanwhile, having lost his discretion after all that the "Herr Professor" did, he decided to leave Doris and marry Anji. Outraged by this behavior, which he said runs counter to all ethics, Abraham Bijur wrote an open letter to the New York Times, in which he called Freud a "charlatan doctor." He gave a copy to Tadeusz Ames, who forwarded it to Freud, stressing that the New York Psychoanalytic Society could be in danger from this case if the letter went to press. Jones, who was trying to put out the fire, he said that Anji got it wrong. And he emphasized, however - that was his deepest thought - that society would treat adultery much more favorably than the divorce of two unfortunate spouses who want to create a new family. Thus, he seemed to admit that, not by washing, so by rolling, he pushed Horace and Anzhi to divorce, but only because, as it seemed to him, they both would not find a common language with their current spouses.
In other circumstances, Freud made different decisions, in particular, when he was sure that adultery was just a symptom of a problem that was not settled with his still beloved spouse. In short, as much as he cursed adultery, he also favored “good partings,” provided that they led to a new marriage. As for this particular case, he was cruelly mistaken about Frink. And he persisted, sending him a meaningless letter: “I demanded from Anji not to repeat to strangers that I advised you to marry her, otherwise you may have a nervous breakdown. Let me tell you about your idea that she has lost part of her beauty, can she not be replaced by another - that she has gained part of her fortune? You complain that you do not understand your homosexuality, which implies that you cannot imagine me as a rich man. If all goes well, we will replace the imaginary gift with a real contribution to psychoanalytic funds. "
Like all his followers, Freud contributed his share of the financing of the psychoanalytic movement. Therefore, it is not surprising that he gave Frink the idea to also participate financially with some kind of donation in order to be cured of fantasies. As for the interpretations according to which a woman, who had lost her attractiveness in the eyes of her lover, could interest him in her condition, it stemmed from traditional ideas about a bourgeois family. Freud behaved with his patient as in the old days - a matchmaker, confusing the couch and marriage advice. Proof that he did not understand Frink's disorder, mistaking him for an intelligent neurotic with a repressed homosexuality in relation to his father. Having gained the opportunity to marry his mistress, he experienced a terrible feeling of guilt and in November 1922 returned to Vienna again. When he had a brief bout of delirium, he felt as if he was lying in a grave, and during the sessions he walked frantically in circles until Freud called another doctor, Joe Asch, to treat him and look after him at the hotel. The situation worsened when, after her ex-husband married Anji, Doris died from complications of pneumonia. Frink claimed that he loved his first wife, then began to harass the second.
In May 1924, Freud was forced to abandon his patient, declare him mentally ill and unable to lead the New York Psychoanalytic Society. “I had pinned all my hopes on him, although the response to psychoanalysis treatment was of a psychotic nature. […] When he saw that he was not allowed to freely satisfy his childhood desires, he could not resist. He renewed his relationship with his new wife. Under the pretext that she is intractable in matters of money, he did not receive in return the recognition that he constantly demanded from her. " At the request of Frink himself, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he was treated by Adolph Meyer, and here he learned that Anji wanted to break up with him. Throughout his subsequent life, he fell into inspiration, then into melancholy, died in 1936, forgotten by everyone.
40 years later, his daughter Helene Kraft discovered, among the papers of Adolf Meyer, the correspondence between her father and Freud, as well as many other documents and, having publicly disclosed their contents, called the Viennese teacher a charlatan. The adherents of anti-Freudianism took advantage of this to accuse Freud of manipulating patients who became victims of his insidious theory under his pen. As for psychoanalysts, they continued to turn a blind eye to the clinical mistakes of their idol. […]
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A. Freud believed that in the psychoanalysis of children, firstly, it is possible and necessary to use analytical methods common with adults on speech material: hypnosis, free associations, interpretation of dreams, symbols, parapraxias (slips of the tongue, forgetting), analysis of resistances and transference. Secondly, she also pointed to the peculiarity of the technique of analyzing children. The difficulties of using the method of free associations, especially in young children, can be partially overcome by analyzing dreams, waking dreams, dreams, games and drawings, which will reveal the tendencies of the unconscious in an open and accessible form. A. Freud proposed new technical methods to help in the study of I. One of them is the analysis of the transformations undergone by the child's affects. In her opinion, the discrepancy between the expected (from past experience) and demonstrated (instead of upset - a cheerful mood, instead of jealousy - excessive tenderness) emotional reaction of the child indicates that protective mechanisms are working, and thus it becomes possible to penetrate into the child's I. The analysis of animal phobias, the characteristics of school and intrafamily behavior of children presents a rich material on the formation of protective mechanisms at specific phases of child development. Thus, A. Freud attached great importance to children's play, believing that,
1 See: Psychoanalysis of Child Sexuality (3. Freud, K. Abraham. C.G. Jung,
E. Jones, S. Ferenczi) / Ed. B.JI. Lukova. SPb., 1997.
2 See: A. Freud Psychology I and defense mechanisms. M., 1993.
Chapter V. Mental development as personality development.
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carried away by the game, the child will be interested in the interpretations offered to him by the analyst regarding the protective mechanisms and unconscious emotions hidden behind them.
The psychoanalyst, according to A. Freud, must have authority with the child for success in child therapy, since the child's superego is relatively weak and unable to cope with the motives released as a result of psychotherapy without outside help. The character of the child's communication with the adult is of particular importance: “Whatever we start to do with the child, whether we teach him arithmetic or geography, whether we educate him or subject him to analysis, we must first of all establish certain emotional relationships between ourselves and the child. The more difficult the work that lies ahead of us, the stronger this connection should be, ”A. Freud emphasized1. When organizing research and correctional work with difficult children (aggressive, anxious), the main efforts should be aimed at forming attachment, developing libido, and not at directly overcoming negative reactions. The influence of adults, which gives the child, on the one hand, hope for love, and on the other hand, makes him fear punishment, allows him to develop his own ability to control his inner instinctive life over the course of several years. In this case, part of the achievements belongs to the forces of the child's I, and the rest - to the pressure of external forces; it is impossible to determine the ratio of influences.
In psychoanalysis of a child, A. Freud emphasizes, the external world exerts a much stronger influence on the mechanism of neurosis than in an adult. The child psychoanalyst must necessarily work to transform the environment. The outside world, its educational influences, is a powerful ally of the child's weak self in the struggle against instinctive tendencies.
The English psychoanalyst M. Klein (1882-1960) developed her own approach to the organization of psychoanalysis at an early age2. The main attention was paid to the child's spontaneous play activity. M. Klein, in contrast to A. Freud, insisted on the possibility of direct access to the content of the child's unconscious. She believed that action is more characteristic of a child than speech, and free play is the equivalent of an adult's flow of associations; stages of play are analogs of the associative production of an adult.
1 Freud A. Introduction to child psychoanalysis. M., 1991.S. 36.
2 See: Development in psychoanalysis / M. Klein, S. Isaac, J. Ravery, P. Hey-mann. M., 2001.
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Section three. Basic concepts of mental development.
Psychoanalysis with children, according to Klein, was based mainly on spontaneous children's play, which was helped by specially created conditions1. The therapist provides the child with a lot of small toys, "the whole world in miniature" and gives him the opportunity to act freely for an hour.
The most suitable for psychoanalytic play techniques are simple non-mechanical toys: wooden male and female figures of different sizes, animals, houses, hedges, trees, various vehicles, cubes, balls and sets of balls, plasticine, paper, scissors, an unsharp knife, pencils, crayons , paints, glue and rope. The variety, number, miniature size of toys allow the child to widely express their fantasies and use the experience of conflict situations. The simplicity of toys and human figures ensures that they can be easily incorporated into plot moves that are fictional or suggested by the child's real experience.
A. Freud's work "Introduction to Child Psychoanalysis"
In this work, Anna Freud addressed the following issues:
1. A child, unlike an adult, is never an initiator
the beginning of the analysis - the decision about the need for analysis is always made by him
parents or other people around him. According to Anna Freud,
some child psychoanalysts (for example, Melania Klein) do not consider
this is a serious obstacle to work, however, in her opinion, it is quite
it is advisable to try in some way to cause in the child
interest, readiness and consent to treatment. This part
psychoanalytic work she distinguishes in a separate period of children's
psychoanalysis - preparatory. During this peroid
there is no direct analytical work, it just happens
"transfer of a certain undesirable state to another desirable
state with the help of all the means available to an adult in
Necessary to start the analysis: awareness of the disease, trust in the analyst
and a solution for analysis. As examples, Anna cites the following
2. One of her six-year-old patients told her: “There is a devil in me.
Can I take it out? "The answer was: yes, you can, but if we
we decide to do this together, then we will have to produce a lot of not
too nice things. The girl, on reflection, agreed - it was so
compliance with an important rule of therapy has been achieved - voluntary
patient consent.
3. Another patient brought in by her parents agreed to work
together with a psychoanalyst, trying to gain an ally in the fight
with them, just as the first girl tried to get
an ally in the war with the "devil".
4. Quite often the child does not agree to work with
analyst. In such cases, according to Anna Freud, it makes sense to
for some time to try to gain favor
child - in the given example, she describes the case with
a ten-year-old boy, when at first he had to achieve simply
the boy's interest in the personality of the therapist, then try
show that communication can be not only interesting, but also
useful and finally make it clear what to analyze
means getting multiple benefits. After that
the child begins to realize the real benefits of conducting
psychoanalytic work.
Thus, according to Anna Freud, the first and important difference
child psychoanalysis from its classical form is the presence
a special, preparatory stage at which the child must admit
your problem and make a decision for analysis. According to the author, "
little neglected neurotic instead of consciousness of the disease ... there is
a sense of depravity, which becomes ... a motive for
analysis ".
Based on the fact that the rough treatment of patients aged 2 to 3 years with their toys testifies within the framework of the transference to the nature of early object relations, Melanie Klein concluded that there was an initial conflict between love and hate between tender and destructive impulses, the symbolic expression of which was there are fragmentary objects, in particular the beloved "kind" and "evil" mother's breast, which is under real attack from the infant.
According to Klein, the infant perceives the mother as "a proto-stalker who attacks the child's body from the outside and from the inside," threatening to castrate a male infant or gut babies of both sexes. Klein was "convinced that at the heart of infantile neuroses lies psychotic (ie, paranoid and schizoid) anxiety, which to a certain extent is an element of normal development in infancy ...".
She divided the oral developmental stage into two subphases - paranoid fundus-schizoid and depressive - believing that the experiences characteristic of this stage of psychological evolution persist throughout life and are available for reactivation at any age. Judging by the results of Melanie Klein's observations, as the process of integration of the elements of the object, pleasant and unpleasant for the child's ego, develops, depressive anxiety arises, which is why she called the subphase dating from the second half of the first year of life "depressive".
The stumbling block between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein was the latter's opinion that the Oedipus complex and the super-ego are formed at an age corresponding to the depressive subphase of development. Klein considered oral frustrations caused by external circumstances or the child's “inability” to “get satisfaction from breastfeeding” as a permissive factor in this process.
The different views of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud about the process of child development and the origin of neuroses, of course, could not serve as a basis for similar methods of treatment.
If Anna Freud gravitated towards "modification of classical methods of treatment", then Klein saw significant differences between the interpretation of childhood experiences and the analysis of the state of an adult, although she admitted that when studying the ego of an adult, it would be no less appropriate to take into account the level of psychological development when studying the ego of a child ...
She recommended to immediately pay attention to the positive and negative manifestations of the transference and to carry out “deep” interpretation. At the same time, first there is a reactivation, and then the elimination of aggressive and sadistic impulses of an oral nature, which are not least due to envy and hatred that arise in connection with the “unconscious knowledge” that parents are entering into coitus, viewed through the prism of oral fantasies.
Annna Freud was of a different opinion, although she subsequently revised some of her ideas about modifying treatment methods taking into account the conditions of child psychoanalysis, in particular the concept of "nonanalytic prelude" therapy. She believed that children are less susceptible to analysis than adults, because they often do not experience suffering, under the pressure of which the need for analytical treatment arises, and do not show a tendency to self-contemplation, reflection and illumination.
The younger the patient, the more modest his ability to perceive the truth, the lower the threshold of perception of anxiety and frustration, the more vulnerable the idea of the immutability of the object, and therefore the higher the risk of transference. An important obstacle to the development of the psychoanalytic treatment process, Anna Freud considered the fact that children prefer to express their feelings with actions, rather than words.
In addition, she believed that "a delicate situation may arise in connection with the inevitable intervention of parents in the process of analyzing the child." “In these circumstances, it is rather difficult to develop methods of treatment in accordance with the canons of psychoanalysis, that is, to interpret the phenomena associated with transference and countertransference, eliminate confusion and regression, replace primitive pathogenic defense mechanisms with reasonable, adaptive responses, strengthen the overall potential of the ego and create conditions, in which the ego will be able to control a larger space of the psyche. "
A. Freud divides the personality into its stable components: unconscious, or "It", "I", "Super-I". The instinctive part, in turn, is divided into sexual and aggressive components (psychoanalytic law of bipolarity). The development of the sexual instinct is determined by the sequence of libidinal phases (oral, anal-sadistic, phallic, latent, prepubertal, pubertal).
The corresponding phases of the development of aggressiveness are manifested in such types of behavior as:
Biting, spitting, clinging (oral aggressiveness) - oral stage.
Destruction and cruelty (a manifestation of anal sadism) - the anal stage.
Lust for power, bragging, conceit (at the phallic stage) - the phallic stage.
Dissocial beginnings - prepubertal and pubertal stages.
For the development of the instance of "I" A. Freud also outlines an approximate chronology of the development of defense mechanisms: repression, reactive formations, projections and transfers, sublimation, splitting, regressions, etc. Analyzing the development of the "Super-I", A. Freud describes identification with parents and interiorization of parental authority.
Each phase of a child's development, according to A. Freud, is the result of resolving the conflict between internal instinctive drives and the restrictive requirements of the external social environment.
A. Freud believes that, taking into account the phases, it is possible to build lines of development for an infinite number of spheres of children's life:
lines of development of feeding from infancy to reasonable eating habits of adults; lines of development of neatness from the initial educational program of an adult to automatic mastering of the functions of selection; lines of development of physical independence, attitudes towards elders; lines of development from infantile dependence to adult sexuality.
Inconsistency, disharmony between different lines should not be considered as a pathological phenomenon, since mismatches in the rate of development observed in people from a very early age may be just variations within the normal range. The steps from immaturity to maturity, rather than chronological age, are seen by her as indicators of development. If growth occurs through progressive advancement to a higher level, then normal child development, according to A. Freud, goes in leaps, not gradually step by step, but back and forth with progressive and regressive processes in their constant alternation. In the course of their development, children take two steps forward and one backward.
A. Freud considers child development as a process of gradual socialization of the child, subject to the law of transition from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality. A. Freud outlines the main components of the socialization process:
1.
A newborn, in her opinion, knows only one law, namely, the principle of pleasure, to which all its manifestations are blindly subordinated. And if the search for pleasure is the "inner principle" of the child, then the satisfaction of desires depends on the external world. From the very beginning, there is a gap between desire and the ability to satisfy it.
As a result of this discrepancy between the internal and the external, the desire for pleasure and taking into account reality, all children of this age, in the words of A. Freud, are "entangled" in the constant difficulties of the external world and, naturally, disobedient, impolite and stubborn.
A. Freud characterizes the child as immature as long as instinctive desires and their realization are divided between him and his environment in such a way that desires remain on the child's side, and the decision to satisfy or refuse them is on the side of the external world.
In early childhood, the pleasure principle dominates without internal resistance. In older children, he still owns such aspects of the psyche as the unconscious and, in part, the conscious life of fantasies, dreams, etc. Only the principle of reality creates, according to A. Freud, space for postponement, delay and consideration of the social environment and its requirements.
2. Development of protective mechanisms against aggressive impulses "It".
According to A. Freud, almost all the normal elements of a child's life, especially such as greed, self-interest, jealousy, the wish for death, push the child in the direction of dissociality. Socialization is a defense against them.
3. Formation and development of mental processes.
The child's progress from the pleasure principle to the reality principle cannot occur before the various functions of the "I" reach certain stages of development.
4. Formation of mechanisms for the emergence of the instance "Super-I".
The formation of an effective "super-ego" means a decisive progress in socialization for the child. The child is now able not only to obey the moral requirements of his social environment, but "he himself takes part in them and can feel like their representative."
5. Formation of the Ideal-Ya instance.
When the "Super-I" instance is formed, it is still very weak and for many years needs support and support from an authoritative person (parents, teacher) - Ideal-I. This instance can easily collapse due to strong experiences and disappointment in him.
6. "Steps out".
Imitation, identification, introjection are necessary preconditions for the subsequent entry into the social community of adults. Further, new steps should be taken "outward": from family to school, from school to public life. And each of these steps is accompanied by the rejection of personal advantages, from the "individually-attentive" attitude towards oneself.
A. Freud is deeply convinced that inharmonious personal development is based on many reasons. This is uneven progress along the lines of development, and unevenly lasting regressions, and the peculiarities of the isolation of internal instances from each other, and the formation of connections between them, and much more.
Personal protective mechanisms.
These are "adaptive mechanisms aimed at reducing pathogenic emotional stress, preventing painful feelings and memories and the further development of psychological and physiological disorders." All defense mechanisms have two things in common. First, they are unconscious, that is, they act primarily on an unconscious level. Second, they distort, deny, or falsify reality.
1. Displacement. This is a mechanism of psychological defense through which impulses (desires, thoughts, feelings) that are unacceptable to a person and that cause anxiety become unconscious.
2. Denial- the mechanism of psychological defense, which consists in denial, unawareness (lack of perception) of any traumatic circumstance.
3. Reactive formations. This type of psychological defense is often identified with overcompensation. Reactive formations include the replacement of "Ego" - unacceptable tendencies for the directly opposite.
4. Regression- return to an earlier stage of development or to more primitive forms of behavior, thinking.
5. Insulation- separation of affect from intellectual functions.
6. Identification- protection from a threatening object by identifying with it.
7. Projection. The mechanism of projection is based on the process by which unconscious and unacceptable feelings and thoughts for a person are localized outside, ascribed to other people.
8. Substitution (offset). The action of this defense mechanism is manifested in a kind of "release" of suppressed emotions, usually hostility and anger, directed at the weaker, defenseless (animals, children, subordinates).
9. Rationalization- a pseudo-rational explanation by a person of his desires, actions, in reality caused by reasons, the recognition of which would threaten the loss of self-esteem.
10. Sublimation- psychological protection by desexualizing the initial impulses and transforming them into socially acceptable forms of activity.
Anna Freud continued and developed the classical theory and practice of psychoanalysis. After receiving a pedagogical education, she worked as a teacher in a school for the children of her father's patients and in 1923 began her own psychoanalytic practice.
In the work "The Norm and Pathology of Childhood Development" (1965) A. Freud pointed out the origins of psychoanalytic interest in children. She wrote that after the publication of her father's book Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), many analysts began to observe their children and find confirmation of all the features of child development noted by Freud: child sexuality, Oedipus and castration complexes.
Following the tradition of classical psychoanalysis, A. Freud divides the personality into its stable components: the unconscious or "It", "I", "Super-I". The instinctive part, in turn, is divided into sexual and aggressive components (psychoanalytic law of bipolarity). The development of the sexual instinct is determined, as in classical psychoanalysis, by the sequence of libidinal phases (oral, anal-sadistic, phallic, latent, prepubertal, pubertal). The corresponding phases of the development of aggressiveness are manifested in such types of behavior as biting, spitting, clinging (oral aggressiveness); destruction and cruelty (a manifestation of anal sadism); lust for power, boasting, conceit (at the phallic stage); dissocial beginnings (in prepubertal and pubertal). For the development of the instance "I" A. Freud also outlines an approximate chronology of development defense mechanisms: displacements, reactive formations, projections and transfers, sublimation, splitting, regressions. Analyzing the development of the "Super-I", A. Freud describes identification with parents and the internalization of parental authority. Each phase of a child's development, according to A. Freud, is the result of resolving the conflict between internal instinctive drives and the restrictive requirements of the external social environment.
The steps from immaturity to maturity, rather than chronological age, are seen by her as indicators of development. If growth occurs through progressive advancement to a higher level, then normal child development, according to A. Freud, goes in leaps, not gradually step by step, but back and forth again with progressive and regressive processes in their constant alternation. In the course of their development, children take two steps forward and one backward.
In contrast to classical psychoanalysis, which studies primarily mental phenomena hidden from consciousness, A. Freud is one of the first in the children's psychoanalytic tradition to extend the basic provisions of 3. Freud to the sphere of consciousness, studying the instance of "I" of the personality. A. Freud considers child development as a process of gradual socialization of the child, subject to the law of transition from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality.
A newborn, in her opinion, knows only one law, namely, the principle of pleasure, to which all its manifestations are blindly subordinated. However, for the fulfillment of such bodily needs of the child as hunger, sleep, temperature regulation, the infant is completely left to the adult caring for him. And if the search for pleasure is the "inner principle" of the child, then the satisfaction of desires depends on the external world.
The mother fulfills or rejects the child's wishes and through this role becomes not only the first object of love, but also the first legislator for the child. According to A. Freud, the fact that the mood of the mother has a decisive influence on the child belongs to the earliest achievements of psychoanalysis, that is, the fundamental conclusions of studies of adult patients. Observations of children again confirm that the mother's individual preferences and antipathies have a significant impact on the development of the child. "The fastest developing is what the mother likes most and what she most vivaciously welcomes; the development process slows down where she remains indifferent or hides her approval," A. Freud notes.
Despite the helplessness, the child very early manages to learn to show a certain relationship to the mother. Already at this early age, one can distinguish between obedient, "good", easily controlled children, and intolerant, headstrong, "heavy" children who violently protest against every restriction demanded of them.
The more independent the child becomes in relation to food, sleep, etc., A. Freud believes, the more bodily needs recede into the background, giving way to new instinctive desires. The child strives for their satisfaction with the same zeal as before striving for satiety with a feeling of hunger. Once again, he is faced with the limitations that the outside world imposes on him. The child, naturally, seeks to fulfill his instinctive goals without delay, without taking into account external circumstances, but this can become dangerous for his life, therefore, an adult, whether he wants it or not, is forced to restrict the child. As a result of this discrepancy between the internal and the external, the desire for pleasure and taking into account reality, all children of this age, in the words of A. Freud, are "entangled" in the constant difficulties of the external world and, naturally, disobedient, impolite and stubborn.
According to A. Freud, a child's chances to remain mentally healthy largely depend on how much his "I" is able to endure hardships, that is, overcome displeasure.
According to A. Freud, almost all normal elements of a child's life, especially such as greed, self-interest, jealousy, the wish for death, push the child in the direction of desociality. Socialization is a defense against them. Some instinctive desires are repressed from consciousness, others pass into their opposite (reactionary formations), are directed to other goals (sublimation), shift from their own person to another (projection), etc. From A. Freud's point of view, there is no internal contradiction between developmental and defense processes. The real contradictions lie deeper - they are between the desires of the individual and his position in society, therefore, the smooth course of the process of socialization is impossible. Organization of the protective process- this is an important and necessary component of the development of "I".
The child's progress from the pleasure principle to the reality principle cannot occur before the various functions of the "I" reach certain stages of development. Only after the memory begins to function, the child's actions can be carried out on the basis of experience and foresight. Without control of reality, there is no distinction between inner and outer, fantasy and reality. Only the acquisition of speech makes the child a member of human society. Logic, reasonable thinking contribute to understanding the relationship of cause and effect, and adaptation to the requirements of the surrounding world ceases to be a simple submission - it becomes conscious and adequate.
The formation of the principle of reality, on the one hand, and thought processes, on the other, opens the way for new mechanisms of socialization - such as imitation, identification, introjection, which contribute to the formation of the "Super-I" instance. The formation of an effective "super-ego" means a decisive progress in socialization for the child. The child is now able not only to obey the moral requirements of his social environment, but "he himself takes part in them and can feel like their representative." However, this internal instance is still very weak and needs support and support from an authoritative person (parents, teacher) for many years and can easily collapse due to strong feelings and disappointment in him.
"Only one ability in a child's life deserves this position, namely the ability to develop normally, go through the steps prescribed according to the plan, form all aspects of the personality and fulfill the requirements of the external world accordingly."
18. Epigenetic theory of personality development E. Erickson. Basic concepts. Stages of psychosocial development. Life crises and ways to overcome them.
Eric Erikson's theory, like Anna Freud's theory, arose from the practice of psychoanalysis. E. Erickson created a psychoanalytic concept of the relationship between "I" and society. However, his concept is that of childhood. Personality consists of: "It" - the unconscious; "Super-I" - norms and values of culture; and the instance "I". The main task of E. Erickson was to develop a new psychohistorical theory of personality development, taking into account a specific cultural environment.
According to E. Erickson, each stage of development has its own expectations inherent in a given society, which an individual can justify or not justify, and then he is either included in society or rejected by it. These considerations of E. Erickson formed the basis of the two most important concepts of his concept - "group identity" and "ego-identity".
Group identity is formed due to the fact that from the first day of life, the upbringing of a child is focused on including him in a given social group, on developing the attitude inherent in this group.
Self-identity is formed in parallel with group identity and creates in the subject a sense of stability and continuity of his "I", despite the changes that occur with the person in the process of his growth and development. The formation of ego-identity or, in other words, the integrity of the personality continues throughout a person's life and goes through a number of stages.
"Organ mode"- the zone of concentration of sexual energy. The organ with which sexual energy is associated at a particular stage of development creates a certain mode of development, that is, the formation of a dominant personality quality.
"Modality of behavior"- when society through its institutions gives a special meaning to the modus.
Stages of psychosocial development:
1. infancy (oral stage) - trust / distrust: building basic trust in the world, overcoming feelings of disunity and alienation;
2. early age (anal stage) - autonomy / doubt, shame; struggle against shame and doubt for independence and independence;
3. age of play (phallic stage) - initiative / guilt; developing active initiative, and at the same time experiencing a sense of moral responsibility for their desires;
4. school age (latent stage) - achievement / inferiority; the formation of industriousness, which is opposed by the awareness of one's own ineptitude and uselessness;
5. adolescence - identity / identity diffusion; the task of the first integral awareness of oneself and one's place in the world appears; the negative pole in solving this problem is uncertainty in understanding one's own "I" ("diffusion of identity");
6. youth - intimacy / isolation; finding a life partner and establishing close friendships that overcome feelings of loneliness;
7. maturity - creativity / stagnation; the struggle of human creative forces against inertia and stagnation .;
8. old age - integration / disillusionment in life; the formation of the final integral idea of oneself, one's life path, as opposed to possible disappointment in life and growing despair.
The solution to each of these problems, according to E. Erickson, is reduced to the establishment of a certain dynamic relationship between the two extreme poles. Personality development is the result of the struggle between these extreme possibilities, which does not fade away during the transition to the next stage of development.
E. Erickson outlined the criteria for genuine ritual actions:
1) the general value for all participants in the interaction while maintaining the differences between individuals;
2) the ability to develop along the stages of the life cycle, during which the achievements of the previous stages in the future at later stages acquire a symbolic meaning;
3) the ability to maintain a certain novelty with all repetitions, playful character.
Ritualization in human behavior- it is an agreement-based interaction of at least two people who renew it at regular intervals in repetitive circumstances; it is essential for the "I" of all participants.
Stages of ritualization according to E. Erickson:
1. infancy - reciprocity (religion);
2. early childhood - distinguishing between good and evil (judgment);
3. playing age - dramatic development (theater);
4. school age - formal rules (school);
5. youth - solidarity of convictions (ideology).
Elements of an advanced ritual:
1) numinous, a ritual of mutual recognition, which, forming in infancy, manifests itself in an expanded form in the relationship between mother and child, subsequently permeates all relationships between people.
2) critical- this ritual helps the child to distinguish between good and evil. At an early age, the child's independence increases, which, however, has certain limits. The element of "prudence" (critical ritual) differs from the ritual of "reciprocity" (reverence) in that, as E. Erickson writes, the free will of the child first appears here.
3) dramatic. It is formed during the playing period. In play, the child is able to avoid adult ritualizations, he can correct and recreate past experiences and anticipate future events. True ritualization, according to E. Erickson, is impossible in single games, only game communication makes it possible for dramatic developments. Ritualism at this stage becomes a moralistic and forbidding suppression of free initiative and the absence of creatively ritualized ways to overcome the feeling of guilt. E. Erickson calls it moralism.
4) formal, an element of excellence in performance... Formalization of school relations is of great importance for the external aspect of the ritualized behavior of adults. The external form of rituals affects the feelings, maintains the active tension of the "I", as it is "conscious"
the order in which a person "participates"
5) ideological, improvisational side of ritualization... At this age, an ideological element is added to the elements of reverence, justice, dramatic and formal elements of ontogenetic development. The opposite pole at this stage is totalitarianism.
E. Erickson's concept is called the epigenetic concept of a person's life path. As you know, the epigenetic principle is used in the study of embryonic development. According to this principle, everything that grows has a common plan. Based on this general plan, the individual parts develop. Moreover, each of them has the most favorable period for preferential development. This happens until all the parts, having developed, form a functional whole.
19. Initial principles and basic concepts of the theory of intellectual development of a child g. Piaget. Characteristics of the clinical method.
20s - 30s of the 20th century.
The preoperative period of Piaget's work.
Young Piaget paid the most attention to the speech of preschool children. Piaget's analysis showed that children's utterances can be divided into two groups:
1. Socialized speech - characterized by an interest in the response of a communication partner, its function is to influence the interlocutor.
2. Egocentric speech. The child communicates what he is thinking at the moment, not being interested in whether they are listening to him, what is the point of view of the interlocutor.
Piaget's original hypothesis was that discovered an intermediate form of thinking, egocentric thinking, which provides the transition from the autism of the infant to the realistic socialized thinking of the adult. Autistic thought - individualized, undirected, subconscious, guided by the desire to satisfy desire; comes to light in images. Socialized, rational, directed thought is social, pursues conscious goals, adapts to reality, obeys the laws of experience and logic, is expressed in speech. Egocentric thinking- an intermediate form in the development of thinking in the genetic, functional, structural aspects.
Egocentrism as the main feature of children's thinking consists in judging the world exclusively from its own direct point of view, fragmentary and personal, and in the inability to take into account someone else's. Egocentrism is viewed by Piaget as a kind of unconscious systematic illusion of cognition, as a hidden mental position of a child. Egocentric thinking is an active cognitive position at its origins, the initial cognitive centering of the mind.
Egocentrism- the basis of all other features of children's thinking. Egocentrism does not lend itself to direct observation, it is expressed through other phenomena. Among them are the dominant features of children's thinking: realism, animism, artificalism.
Realism. At a certain stage of development, the child considers objects as they are given by their direct perception. Realism can be intellectual - the name of an object is as real as the object itself. Moral realism is manifested in the fact that the child does not take into account the internal intention in the act and judges it only according to the visible end result.
Animism represents a universal animation, endowing things with consciousness and life, feelings.
Artificalism- understanding of natural phenomena by analogy with human activity, everything that exists is considered as created by man, at his will or for man.
Among the list of other features of children's logic highlighted by Piaget:
Syncretism (global schema and subjectivity of children's ideas; the tendency to associate everything with everything; the perception of details, causes and effects as side by side),
Transduction (transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general),
Failure to synthesize and fit (lack of connection between judgments),
Insensitive to contradiction
Inability to observe introspection
Difficulties in realizing
Impermeability to experience (the child is not isolated from external influence, education, but it is assimilated and deformed by him).
All these traits form a complex that determines the child's logic, and the complex is based on the egocentrism of speech and thinking.
"Egocentric Illusion"- lack of understanding of the existence of other points of view and their non-correlation with their own.
The roots of egocentrism as a preschooler's cognitive position in the peculiar nature of children's activities, in the relatively late socialization of the child, in adaptation to the social environment no earlier than 7-8 years.
To overcome egocentrism, it is necessary realize your I as a subject and separate the subject from the object, learn to coordinate your point of view with others. The decrease in egocentrism is explained by the transformation of the initial position. The development of knowledge about oneself comes from social interaction, especially important in this respect are the phenomena of cooperation between a child and peers, when disputes and discussions are possible. Thus, there is a gradual decentration of cognition, socialized thought supplants egocentric thought, and egocentric speech disappears, dies out.
The basic law of child development, formulated by Piaget in his early works, is the law of the transition from general egocentricity to intellectual decentration, a more objective mental position.
