The Story of Sam

Middle childhood is a pivotal time in character development during which enduring internal structures are formed. Fiction can offer insights into the cognitive and affective shifts of this developmental phase and how they are transformed in adulthood. While the success of beloved books for latency age children lies in the solutions they offer to the conflict between the pull toward independence and the pull back to the safety of childhood, the enduring stories for adults about children in their middle years can be seen as works of mourning for the relationship with the parents and the childhood self, but more importantly as attempts to transform their experience of middle childhood through the retrospective creation of a coherence that was initially absent. Thematic and structural elements distinguish two groups of stories for adults: the first appears to solve the conflicts of this period by importing adult knowledge and perspective into the narrative of childhood; the second describes the unconscious disorganizing aspects of this period, thereby offering readers a chance to reorganize their own memories, to make a coherent whole out of the fragmented, the confusing, and the unresolved.

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Looking Back—and Forward—atThe Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

Brinich¹

2015

The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

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

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The Story of Sam

Cited by 11 publications

References 32 publications

Observing Development: A Comparative View of Attachment Theory and Separation–Individuation Theory

Observing Development: A Comparative View of Attachment Theory and Separation–Individuation Theory

Coherence, Competence, and Confusion in Narratives of Middle Childhood

Looking Back—and Forward—atThe Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

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