Psychoanalysis

Grounded in the belief that individual human development and personality are strongly influenced by, if not determined by, early life events, childhood has been a central construct in psychoanalysis since its inception. Reading across psychoanalytic works and works in other disciplines influenced by psychoanalytic thinking, the child is always present, whether explicitly named or not, because the experiences, expectations, desires, and needs of infant and child are always assumed to be reflected in the later beliefs, emotions, and actions of the adult. Sigmund Freud’s initial descriptions of childhood were based on retrospective reports of adult patients. An important shift occurred when psychoanalytic researchers began direct observations of infants and children as well as clinical and educational engagements with children. Perspectives on childhood are contested within the psychoanalytic field, with varied beliefs existing across classical Freudian, Kleinian, Lacanian, ego psychology, object relations, interpersonal, and relational schools of psychoanalytic thought. Psychoanalytic perspectives continue to change as research both inside and outside the field goes on, with attachment theory and theories of mentalization representing two important developments that have wide-ranging influence beyond psychoanalytic practice. The early and middle years of the twentieth century saw close ties between prominent psychoanalysts and anthropologists who studied childhood. Psychoanalysis initially moved into cultural studies, including cultural studies of childhood, through anthropology. Psychoanalytically influenced studies of the child in culture as well as psychoanalytic traditions of child observation influence contemporary conceptualizations of childhood in childhood studies. Psychoanalytic perspectives are also present in conceptualizations of childhood in education. Early psychoanalysts, many of whom were trained as teachers, took a strong interest in how psychoanalytic principles could be applied to education in ways believed to address the assumed instinctual desires of children. While psychoanalytic theory is no longer widely espoused in education, a small number of contemporary education theorists, many influenced by cultural studies, attend to psychodynamic factors assumed to be at work in learning and classroom relationships in their analyses of children’s and teachers’ experiences of education and advocacy for educational practices.