ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic therapy was originally devised to fit the need of adult neurotics and, likewise, the first adaptation of the method to children was made with the infantile neuroses in mind. Diagnostically therefore, the borderline quality of a case can be assessed from its negative therapeutic reaction to interpretation of the unconscious proper. Only in child analysis proper is the whole range of therapeutic possibilities kept available for the patient, and all parts of him are given the chance on the one hand to reveal and on the other to cure themselves. In the preoedipal, oedipal, and latency periods, this habitual lack of perceptivity for the inner world also serves the child’s reluctance to experience any conflict consistently as intrapsychic. It is obvious from the foregoing that with regard to all childhood conflicts, whether transitory and developmental, or permanent and neurotic proper, disturbance and analytic therapy are closely matched.
