ABSTRACT
The media devotes much space to heated discussions concerning children, child abuse, the neglect of children, and the 'drop' in childrens' educational standards. These discussions are frequently unsubstantiated, however, by knowledge of and debate about the nature of childhood and the specificity of child development. The call to listen to voices of children may assume either the similarity of children to adults or the essential differences of childhood from adulthood. For developmental psychology, cognition, language and perception unfold progressively from the immaturity of childhood to the maturity of adulthood. Memory's place and functioning within subjectivity can be used as a powerful example to draw out the different emphases of developmental psychology and psychoanalysis. The influences on children's narratives are multiple. Children draw on their families, peer groups, the media and their own internal psychic lives in order to create them.
