Child Guidance in Scotland 1918–1955: Psychiatry versus Psychology?

Abstract

This paper analyses the emergence of child guidance in Scotland from its origins in the 1920s through to the mid-1950s, by which time it was legislatively embedded in the post-war welfare state. It argues that the Scottish experience of child guidance was predominantly based on psychology rather than, as elsewhere in Great Britain, psychiatry; and that this was to have policy implications particularly as legislative provision came to be widely discussed during the Second World War. On one level, therefore, the Scottish version of child guidance won out over the medically based and psychiatrically oriented version which had been strongly promoted in the inter-war era. This was not unproblematic, however, as psychiatrists continued to lay claim to the field and psychology itself suffered a crisis of confidence just as it appeared to be gaining ownership of the child guidance project.