ABSTRACT
Now that we have described and examined the understanding and treatment of the ‘bodies’ of children, we can turn to do the same for their ‘minds’. This is not to say that during our period minds and bodies were ever completely separate in the adult perception of children, and certainly not in the perceptions held by the medical, educational and sociological professions. It was inherent in the develoment of child psychology as it occurred through the Child Study groups and educational psychology, and later psychiatry and the child guidance movement, that there existed a relationship between the physical machinery of the child and its mental apparatus. The psycho-medical dynamic as it progressed after, say, 1918 was notable for the clarification it provided for the long-term recognition of this relationship. From about the 1880s, psychology was gradually introducing into child-study a host of features that were making the concept of childhood more complex, especially when coupled with developments in medical and environmental science. In many respects these refinements came to fruition in the child guidance movement and with the influence of psychology on the understanding of juvenile delinquency. In so doing a subtle and more profound dimension was added to the child as victim and threat.
