Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/33

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ON THE TECHNIQUE OF CHILD-ANALYSIS i

by ■

H. VON HUG-HELLMUTH, Vienna.

•The answer to technical problems in psycho-analytic practice is never

obvious. '

Freud : Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV. Folge.

The analysis both of the child and of the adult has the same end and object; namely, the restoration of the psyche to health and equilibrium which have been endangered through influences known and unknown.

The task of the physician is fulfilled when a cure has been effected, no matter what ethical and social standards the patient pursues; it suffices that the individual becomes once more adapted to life and his vocation, and that he is no longer liable to suc- cumb to the demands and disappointments of life.

The curative and educative work of analysis does not consist only in freeing the young creature from his sufferings, it must also furnish him with moral and aesthetic values. The object of such - curative and educative treatment is not the mature man who when freed is able to take responsibility for his own actions: but the child the adolescent, that is human beings who are still in the developing stage, who have to be strengthened through the educa- tive guidance of the analyst, in order to become human beings with strong wills and definite aims. He who is both analyst and educator must never forget that the aim of child-analysis is character-analysis — in other words, education.

The peculiarity of the child-psyche, its special relationship to the outside world, necessitates a special technique for its analysis.

There are three considerations of fundamental importance: J

1. The child does not come of his own accord to the

> Read before the Sixth International Psycho-Analytical Congress at the Hague, September 1920. Translated by R. Gabler and Barbara Low.

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