Child analysis has occupied a special place in the history of psychoanalysis because of the challenges it poses to practitioners and the clashes it has provoked among its advocates. Since the early days in Vienna under Sigmund Freud child psychoanalysts have tried to comprehend and make comprehensible to others the psychosomatic troubles of childhood and to adapt clinical and therapeutic approaches to all the stages of development of the baby, the child, the adolescent and the young adult.

    Claudine and Pierre Geissmann trace the history and development of child analysis over the last century and assess the contributions made by pioneers of the discipline, whose efforts to expand its theoretical foundations led to conflict between schools of thought, most notably to the rift between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein.

    Now taught and practised widely in Europe, the USA and South America, child and adolescent psychoanalysis is unique in the insight it gives into the psychological aspects of child development, and in the therapeutic benefits it can bring both to the child and its family.

    Lebovici, Sandler, Segal, Forewords. Introduction. Part I: The Day Before Yesterday: Beginnings in Vienna (1905-20). Introduction. Sigmund Freud. Carl Gustav Jung: Divergent Views. Karl Abraham: The 'Father' of Melanie Klein. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth: Pioneer and Most Obstinate of Freud's Disciples. Part II: Yesterday: To Schools, Three Cities - Vienna, Berlin and London (1920-45). Introduction. Anna Freud, The Daughter: Psychoanalytical Education and Observation. Melanie Klein: Early Object Relationships. Eugenie Sokolnicka: Psychoanalysis is Introduced to France. Sophie Morgenstern: The Application of Child Psychoanalysis in France. The Two Schools and Some of the Main Features. 'The Controversies' (1941-5): The Inevitable Confrontation in London. Part III: Today: The Spread of Child Psychoanalysis Throughout the World From 1945. Introduction. Britain after 1945. The United States of America. Argentina. France. Part IV: And Tomorrow? The Basis of Child Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalytical Treatment. Bibliography. Interviews. Name Index. Subject index.

    Biography

    The late Pierre Geissmann, Claudine Geissmann, Anne Marie Sadler, Hanna Segal, Serge Lebovici

    "The arguments are carefully documented with an exhaustive bibliography and with quotations and interviews with a number of psych-analysts. This is a fascinating account from which the reader will have to draw his own conclusion." - Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists