So You Want to Start a Psychoanalytic School? Succumbing to An Almost "Irresistible Temptation"

• Published in: The Psychoanalytic study of the child Vol. 71; no. 1; pp. 130 - 136
• Main Author: Barrett, Denia G
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Haven Taylor & Francis Ltd 01.01.2018
• Subjects: Biographies; Child & adolescent psychiatry; Children & youth; Education; Families & family life; Freud, Anna (1895-1982); Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939); Learning; Low income groups; Montessori, Maria; Psychoanalysis; Psychotherapy; Schools; New York; Cleveland Ohio; Ohio; Chicago Illinois; United States > US
• ISSN: 0079-7308; 2474-3356
• DOI: 10.1080/00797308.2017.1420987

Even before Freud (1923) delineated the roles of the ego and the superego in relation to the powerful urges of the id on the one hand and reality on the other, Anna Freud and a small group of like-minded colleagues were drawn to the problem of how to educate children so as to harness their pleasure-seeking energy and imagination, transform that energy in the service of sublimations and the gratifications of learning and hard work, and help them optimally traverse the divide between individual desires and the prohibitions and demands of living in the real world with others. In my own preparations for this meeting I came up with the following: * Respect (a) For individuals (child, parents, teachers, and others) (b) For the importance of relationships (in differing ways in different times) (c) For the complexity of inner life * Safety from both inner and outer dangers * Consideration of development of the whole personality from a multiple-faceted perspective (metapsychological), along the dimensions of multiple developmental strands, with a recognition of how the past affects the present and the present affects the future * Mastery (as a process aided by preparation, practice, verbalization, and emotional investment) (a) Of the body (b) Of impulses, moods, feelings (c) Of age-expectable skills and relationships (d) Of the creative realm within and the realities of the world outside * Seeking meaning (a) In behavior (b) In emotions (c) In individual experience I concluded that our psychoanalytic schools are designed from a different starting point than regular schools. Differences were found in the psychoanalytic schools that included a lower teacher to child ratio; higher education level of the teachers and the quality of ongoing training and support for them; greater amount of autonomy granted to teachers; more positive relationships among teachers; regular staff meetings; more interactions between parents and teachers; shorter hours (half-day programs); and a socioemotional rather than cognitive focus. Upsets are acknowledged and addressed, and children are supported rather than distracted or denied (redirected). * Time (a) Lots of time is provided for transitions. (b) The classrooms operate at a slow pace or "child speed." (c) Children are not rushed. (d) Teachers are patient, thus children can be patient, too, because they know they will be heard. (e) Focus on independence (self-mastery); rather than rushing to do for the children, teachers support children in doing for themselves, for example, even if a child might spend all but the last few minutes of outside time putting on his or her own snowpants. * The therapeutic component of "family therapists," "family helpers," and "family consultants."