ABSTRACT
In the early 1960s two eminent psychoanalysts mounted literary platforms to set down their opposite views on nonfamilial childrearing. One (Kardiner 1961. Also Chap. 5) noted the dangers to personality involved in such an experience and described a conversation with a kibbutz adult who seemed thoroughly devoid of any capacity for human relationship. The other (Bettelheim 1962), although he had not yet visited any kibbutz, nevertheless was of the opinion that group care in such a setting could and should be conducive to healthy human development. Strangely, argument about group care often has had this kind of surrealistic feel about it, even though group care for better or for worse certainly existed, and some evaluation based on evidence could be made; Trotzkey (Chap. 2) showed the way long ago.
Chapter 14 is an attempt at such evaluation of group care programs whose sponsors in Austria, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Israel claimed to be successful. Though the programs themselves, the attributes of children involved, and the nature of the surrounding milieu varied markedly from one country to another, one factor was common to them. All the programs were based on the premise that culturally normative expectations will yield socially desired behavior and its psychological underpinnings. While this goal was not always obtained, and the probability of very positive results in group care may be lower than its advocates are willing to admit, some settings are obviously successful. Group care as assessed in this paper tends to justify some of Kardiner's and some of Bettelheim's positions; yet in the hand of devoted staff it seems to be more a friend than a foe of the growing child.
