Psychological Problems of Pre-School Children in an Inner Urban Area

Abstract

Attitudes to the treatment of the pre-school child today stem very largely from the mainstream traditions in classical child psychiatry, the most powerful of which is still probably psychoanalysis. Recent articles (e.g. Freud, 1966; Frommer, 1967; Bentovim and Boston, 1973) describing treatment units for very young children exemplify very clearly the influence of these traditions and illustrate the difficulty of breaking new ground in conceptualizing treatment procedures. It will be the purpose of this paper to take issue with such traditions, and to argue that it is time for a new look at pre-school child psychiatry.