0.4 Neo-freudian perspectives on personality  (Page 7/28)

The importance of the analysis of children in terms of research is threefold, according to Anna Freud. It helps to confirm the theories develop by Sigmund Freud and others based on the analysis of adults, it leads to fresh conclusions and new conceptions (and she commends Melanie Klein on this point), and it serves as a point of transition to a field of applied analysis that she felt might become the most important of all: working with children as they develop (A. Freud, 1927/1973). What Anna Freud tried most to do in her writings was to point out the circumstances that make psychoanalysis with children different than psychoanalysis with adults. Fundamentally, there is no difference in the process. However, the results of the process must be viewed differently in order to understand what happens with children. Since Melanie Klein was actively pursuing the same goals, Anna Freud often wrote specifically about Klein, acknowledging her accomplishments, but also pointing out their differences.

The basic argument was aimed at the intellectual and psychological abilities of young children, and the extent to which the psychical apparatus (the id, ego, and superego) have developed. Since all three personality structures have developed in an adult, there is no need for the analyst to worry about that. All the analyst needs to do is to bring into consciousness the neurotic processes that have led to the patient’s symptoms (granted, that may be easier said than done). In children, however, the ego and especially the superego are still developing. Therefore, the analyst must consider the role he/she may play in the development of the child. The analyst must consider the extent to which the superego has already developed, and the analyst may be able to take advantage of its continuing development and help to direct and/or instruct superego development. According to Anna Freud (1927/1973):

…In the analysis of the adult we are at a point where the superego has already established its independence - an independence which is unshakable by any influence from the outside world...But child analysis must include all those cases in which the superego has as yet not reached any true independence. Only too clearly it strives to please its taskmasters, the child’s parents and others responsible for his training…we have to use our influence from without in an educational manner by changing the child’s relation to those who are bringing him up… (pgs. 138-139)

As these processes are actually observed, Anna Freud believed that the child’s symptoms could transform in the presence of the psychoanalyst, in a way that simply did not happen with adults. Thus, it was essential to observe children from a different point of view than one observes adults. She acknowledged that Melanie Klein had contributed to our understanding of how children might be observed, but she felt that Klein had attributed too much to what Klein and her colleagues observed. Klein allowed children the opportunity to play with toys in her office, a situation in which the child’s imagination can run wild. Klein believed this was the same for a child as free association was for an adult. However, Anna Freud countered that an adult is aware of their goals in psychoanalysis, whereas a child at play is not aware of being in therapy. As a result, Anna Freud viewed the play of children as fundamentally different than an adult’s free association: