ABSTRACT
With the benefit of hindsight, we can say today that Freud’s psychosexual theory of child development, derived from his reflections on the early childhood recollections of his adult psychiatric patients, has to be seriously questioned. Nevertheless, empirical support has been found for some aspects of Freudian theory, and his thinking was inspirational to others who have in turn greatly influenced our understanding of children’s development, especially in infancy. Such workers include Melanie Klein, Erik Erikson, John Bowlby, René Spitz, Mary Ainsworth and Michael Rutter. They were in no way Freud’s disciples, but reflected upon certain of his key insights and developed them in their own ways. In this chapter, we provide a brief reminder of Freud’s Oedipal theory of child development, examine the scientific evidence for it and describe some of the later work in child development theory that built upon the Freudian tradition.
