When we think of psychoanalysis, we immediately and
automatically associate it with the towering figure of Sigmund Freud, the
father and founder of this highly influential branch of psychology. Freud’s
views, perspectives and discoveries on human nature and sexuality shocked many
but healed many more. He posited that sexuality or sexual desires basically
start from birth and then find a culminating point in the Oedipus Complex (the
unconscious psycho-sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent) somewhere between
the ages three to six.
In fact, the first years of childhood are so important in
the psychological development of human beings that they often determine whether
a person will have psychological issues and neuroses in their adult life. A
wide range of issues from depression to addiction as well as sexual deviance
and even more commonly mate selection and marital problems can be traced back
to certain traumatic events or triggers that occurred in childhood. As such,
the field of psychoanalysis has helped and even cured many a person by allaying and releasing them from such traumatic baggage of the past.
Yet interestingly, Freud rarely worked with children with
the famous exception of Little Hans, the case that brought Freud’s views on
castration anxiety (the child’s unconscious fear of being punished by the
father for his incestuous desires for his mother) to the foreground. Even then,
the treatment work was mostly done through indirect means as Freud had little
one-on-one contact with Hans himself.
Yet it would be his youngest daughter Anna Freud who
would work with children and shed light as well as directly highlight the
psychological processes of children. Many would claim that children per se do
not need psychoanalysis or that it could be applied only to troublesome kids
and bullies that are often quietly suffering themselves and make life hard for
their surroundings. But psychoanalysis knows no age restrictions and whether we
are thinking of children or adults, this field can help or be of benefit to
practically anyone with issues, a situation and condition quite common in our
modern times.
Approaching the writings of Anna Freud was very
interesting and enlightening to me. I very much enjoyed her style as well as
her compassion and understanding of the interior world of children. She also
demonstrated to me the difficulties as well as rewards of working with children
as opposed to adults. Finally, I was able to learn more than a thing or two
about being a responsible parent and being a responsive teacher myself.
One of the first difficulties as a psychoanalytic child
therapist is closely and intricately tied to the issue and conditions of
employment. For instance, psychologists who treat and counsel troubled youth are
generally employed by and under the service of the state government. As a
result, they are free to diagnose patients and provide their reports to the
government officials in question.
The situation is more complex when it comes to child
therapists who are often employed by and need to directly report to the parents
of the child. In many cases, the psychological problems stem from the home
environment and come from the very people who pay for the therapy sessions
themselves! If the therapist finds justified blame and reproach with the
parents, then the latter might dismiss the efficacy of the treatment and discontinue
working with the therapist to the detriment of all involved.
Conversely, when adults seek the services of a therapist,
they may cancel at any time depending on how they view the progress of the
therapy. Most of the times the issues can be traced to childhood problems, but,
as a rule, the parents then are not the ones who are paying for the treatment;
it is the adults themselves who make that decision and subsequent investment.
When parental issues come to the foreground, the adult can then effectively
deal with them unlike children who are still under the guardianship of their
parents and whose opinions about them have not yet crystallized into fixed
views.
This is due to their different psychological make-up and stage
development. When adults approach the therapist, their ego and superego are already
fully formed yet within the child they are both still fluid and malleable.
There was not enough time to set them in stone and although this would make it
easier to mold them, it also carries with it new sets of challenges.
As a result, the child therapist cannot deal with the
same tools and methods that are used with adults. First, the child therapist needs
to win over the trust and confidence of the child. With adults this can be
achieved through credentials, experience, success rates or even word of mouth
recommendations. Children, however, are not particularly impressed by any of
that!
Hence the child therapist must first engage in play with
the child and gradually build rapport in that manner. Often the therapist must
go along with the child’s way of thinking and even copy their peculiar
behavior as well as agree with their likes and dislikes. For example, in one
case, Anna Freud would meet and talk with a child under the table since that
felt like a safe and comfortable spot for that young individual. Or Anna Freud
had to impress another child with her knowledge and skills of something that
the child viewed as important, be it the act of painting or juggling and
balancing items on one’s head, for instance.
To win over the trust of the child, Anna Freud would often
simply play with them over the first sessions just to make them feel safe and more
comfortable so that they could and would open up to this stranger in front of
them. All this would then involve a somewhat higher degree of artifice and
pretense with the end that the child not only accept but also respect the
therapist as a voice of authority.
With adults, there is or ideally should be very little
judgment emanating from the therapist. Although the therapist guides the
patient and offers interpretations and viewpoints, they are not meant as
judgments. The clients need to find their own truths throughout the whole labor-intensive
process.
Yet children cannot be left to their own devices. They
need to be guided and educated and even reprimanded at times. They need to be
told what the right action is as opposed to a harmful one. In a way, the child therapists
do not experience merely the transference of a parental figure, but they must
in fact become a living embodiment of that figure in front of the child to have
effective treatment.
Usually with adults, the therapist is not much more than
an empty canvas on which the client projects and transfers their own issues and
then through this transference, the clients may reach the state of abreaction,
the realization of the cause and source of their anguish and problems. This
insight would greatly help them to underscore unconscious connections in their
actions and reactions and to see the situation in more level-headed and
clear-minded ways; as a result, they could deal with the issues more
effectively in the future.
A child must also reach certain insights, but they are
different in scope and nature. The child then needs to see themselves in a
different light, but they are still part and parcel of the home environment at
least until their young adulthood. By reducing or managing their fears, they
may even be able to accept and live with the shortcomings of their own parents.
The insights of child psychoanalysis are not only helpful
for therapists, but by extension they are also useful for teachers and parents
alike. One of the main assumptions is that children are passing through normal
psychological states and stages not unlike biological phases and growth.
Children may be docile at one stage but more troublesome
in thought and behavior at another. They can turn from sweet angelic beings to
mean, volatile and tantrum-filled little monsters. They can be obsessed with
poop, toilet humor and genitals at later stages.
As educators and parents, we
need to take all of this with a grain of salt, reduce punishment and increase our
empathy, understanding and patience; moreover, we ought to deal with challenging and difficult
situations in an accepting and enlightened way to avoid future trauma or
scarring of the child.
