Aspects of family mental health in Europe : contributors, D. Buckle ... [et al.].

Date:
1965
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Aspects of family mental health in Europe : contributors, D. Buckle ... [et al.]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    122 ASPECTS OF FAMILY MENTAL HEALTH IN EUROPE It is increasingly becoming the policy in training to enable students to participate in research groups. While in the first year of training such participation as is possible may be of a routine nature or directed to preparatory reading, the opportunity arises in later years for participation in original work. The requirement, for instance, to index at least one case forces the student to relate his casework to psychoanalytic theory in a way that produces in him conviction on points of theory and crystallizes his intellectual understanding. This is particularly important, as purely formal instruction from a number of tutors does not permit as great a degree of integration. Problems arising in the course of indexing are not only due to the personal difficulties the student may have with psychoanalytic theory, but arise from difficulties inherent in the theory itself. The student is able to participate in the eifort to tackle the numerous conceptual problems. The effect of indexing has been seen not only in the students' increasing grasp of theory but also in their clinical work and in the reporting and presentation of their cases. « * * Although the predominant technique of treatment at the Chnic is that of formal child psychoanalysis, this does not mean that the view is held that psychoanalysis is appropriate for the treatment of all childhood disturbances. We are, however, committed to the view that the expanding theory and clinical experience of psycho¬ analysis provides the most useful approach to the understanding of such disturbances. An assumption that underlies the whole of the Clinic's work is that the psychological disorders of children are best assessed from the point of view of the many factors that influence and mould the development of the child. We are convinced that many of the psychological abnormalities of children can be prevented provided that common developmental upsets and problems of mental growth are handled correctly at their start in childhood; that the first signs of mental disturbance are noticed, diagnosed, and dealt with before they have had time to give rise to organized symptoms ; and that, where illness makes it necessary, full clinical treatment is avail¬ able in the early rather than in the final stages of a specific disorder. It follows from this approach that the knowledge of child develop¬ ment and of developmental disturbances gained through work of the type undertaken at the Clinic has application in the field of mental hygiene, particularly where services for children are concerned.