Childhood and the Unconscious

Abstract

Early childhood—or roughly the first five years of life—is cut off from normal recall by what has been called the “repression barrier.” The complexities involved in the formation of that barrier, on the way it functions, and their bearing on the nature and variety of unconscious mental processes both in childhood and in later life has been a major source of concern for psychoanalysts of both adults and children. The analytic study of child development has confirmed many earlier formulations, based on the study of adults, and added greatly to current knowledge. In this, the work of Anna Freud is of vital importance.

But the work has bristled with seeming difficulties. In this regard, Freud’s own struggles reached a watershed with the theoretical and technical advances involved in the formulation of the structural model of the mind. Some apparent discrepancies between the new formulations and those of the topographical model have had repercussions that persist to this day. A growing number of “psychoanalytic psychologies,” many with their own concepts of the nature of what is “unconscious,” have led some to try to resolve anomalies and hold the psychoanalytic movement together on the basis of a hypothetical “common ground,” Of these, the formulations of George Klein, Robert Wallerstein and Joseph and Anne-Marie Sandler have attracted considerable attention. It is argued that none of these approaches add anything to what the mainstream of psycho-analytic thinking through Freud, Anna Freud, and others can supply. Special attention is given to a critique of the Sandlers’ notion of a “past” and “present” unconscious, and the techniques derived from it—themselves seen as a threat to the continued existence of a truly psychoanalytic psychology and its clinical application.

When I try to introduce acquaintances who know nothing of psychoanalysis to the concept of unconscious mental processes, I often refer to what has long been known as infantile amnesia. In a talk in 1986 for the B.B.C. Radio 3 in Britain, I put the matter as follows:

Even the most casual observer of children is bound to be impressed by the changes brought about in the first five years of life. (They may not add up to a miracle, but they come remarkably close to it.) In that short space of time the child is transformed. Helplessly dependent at the start, his existence is first measured only by rocketing need, satiation, and oblivion. By the time he starts school, he has embarked on an articulate social life of sophisticated relationships, new tasks and obligations as well as more structured pleasures. En route, complexities multiply in a developing world of emotional ups and downs, of fresh fears, frustrations, satisfactions and changing demands. If memory sprang from the drama of events, recall of these tempestuous years would indeed be vivid.

And yet . . . that is exactly what it is not. Few people can bring to mind more than one or two hazy recollections of what is arguably the most formative part of their past. Childhood amnesia of this magnitude calls for explanation, and nothing as naive as mere remoteness in time will do by way of it.

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Psychoanalysts often speak of a “repression barrier” in referring to this phenomenon, though Freud himself did not use the term when discussing a fact very well known to him. The analyst of adults is well aware that this part of the patient’s past can only be reconstructed: as a rule, memory for that period defies recovery. The analyst who works with children knows, too, that it is often easier to work with a child under the age of about five years than with one who has reached latency, because unconscious mental functioning is rather more accessible in the younger child than it is later on. A favourite story I tell about a little patient of mine (she was just turned three at the time) illustrates the point. I had just told her something she didn’t want to hear. She drew herself up to her full height and said, with offended hauteur: “Doctor Yorke! I don’t like you and I...