Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/45

 ON THE TECHNIQUE OF CHILD -ANALYSIS 299

free association should be made use of, can only be decided as the circumstances arise. So far as my own experience goes, Abra- ham's remark that older people need more guidance in analysis than the younger ones holds good for both the young child and the adolescent. Perhaps we would add that in the case of these latter, greater care has to be used than with the grown-up. True, it is difficult to disentangle deep-rooted and rigid ideas and feel- ings, but the greater plasticity of the youthful mind lends itself easily to the danger of unintended suggestion instead of yielding to the patient the clearest possible insight. Over and over again I have been able to prove to myself that children know far more about the things that go on in their surroundings than we grown- ups, owing to our anxious solicitude, wish to admit. Does it not sound almost tragi-comic to receive unexpectedly the confession of "^an eleven-year old girl (whose repeated questions about the sexual act I have carefully tried to answer step by step) that when she was five her mother enticed her to look through the keyhole and tlius spy on her father when having intercourse with a pro- stitute !

Of course, dreams play their part in child-analysis also, but we need not fear, any more than in the case of adults, that resist- ance will produce a more intense or imaginary dream-experience. The so-called night-dream signifies only a day-dream to which perhaps the child would never otherwise give expression. And here I wish to emphasize the difficulty there is in getting some children to speak out freely all their ideas because they cannot free themselves from the habit fixed by the daily teaching, namely: 'not to talk nonsense' and so forth.

Although naturally in child-analysis technical expressions, such as the OEdipus and castration-complex, exhibitionism, etc. cannot be made use of, nevertheless the real facts must be made clear. Even in the case of a very young patient it is necessary to explain certain phenomena in the course of treatment. He will quite easily understand the meaning of 'resistance' if first it is explained to him in connection with 'the negative transference', that is, his refusal to speak out of a spirit of defiance; and later in connection with the 'positive transference', that is, his feeling of shame at making a confession to the analyst which is humiliating to himself or his family; and in the end he will understand the readily acquired phrase: 'Now I have no more to say.'

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