ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic treatment of children has increased in accordance with the theoretical and technical options of the various schools of thought, while the psychoanalytic comprehension of mental functioning has added a new meaning to child psychiatry as well as to pedagogy. In any case, this form of psychoanalysis in the present brings out important differences between child and adult psychoanalysis, since the former is not based upon remembrance either at the stage of the constitution of the Oedipal complex or at the latency period. While all treatments aspiring to be authentic child analyses are not able to set in motion a psychoanalytic process, nevertheless beneficial effects are often observed in cures during which the child has apparently acquired little or at times no insight. Finally, the application by psychoanalysts of the psychoanalytic theory to children has considerably enriched not only our knowledge of mental development, but also our means of action and our comprehension of their specific effects.
