ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how education and analysis can work together to promote children's development. At the Anna Freud Centre Nursery, children are regularly observed and discussed, so that the range of experience provided by the nursery can be adjusted as sensitively as possible to their individual requirements. This is good educational practice informed by a psychoanalytic understanding of children's developmental needs. Anna Freud always saw education and therapy as playing complementary roles. The chapter presents the case of Maya. "Maya" joined the nursery at the age of 3 years. While a diagnosis certainly fitted with Maya's inaccessibility to the nursery's educational efforts, analysts’ observations suggested that her uneven development and cognitive difficulties were emotional rather than constitutional in origin. Maya was in analysis for just sixteen months, during which time her behaviour and functioning greatly improved and she successfully negotiated the transition to primary school. Maya's gradual introduction to the nursery facilitated a smooth separation.
