Middle Childhood and Beyond: Evolving Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Developmental Tasks and Clinical Work, Post Classical Theoretical Contributions, Neurobiology, and Our Changing Culture

Abstract

The four articles in this section 1 represent reflections by prominent psychoanalysts on the critical developmental tasks of middle childhood and beyond, whose mastery is essential to healthy adaptions and personality growth at later stages of development as well. Three contributors reconsider the meaning and tasks of the period termed “latency” in light of evolving post classical theoretical contributions, understanding of affect development, neurobiology and significant cultural considerations. Our fourth article contributes a novel framework rooted in affect theory and evolutionary anthropology which is useful in understanding and working with affective instability. Each article presents implications for the developmentally facilitating aspects of the psychoanalytic work, with considerations beyond models which privilege interpretation of unconscious conflict. Beginning with Anne Alvarez’s classic article (2023), “Development toward the latency period: Splitting and the need to forget in borderline children, originally published in 1989 Volume 15 of Journal of Child Psychotherapy ,” we travel with Dr Alvarez as she considers the evolution of her thinking about middle childhood tasks, classical perspectives, and engages us in an exploration and reconsideration of our very understanding of middle childhood (aka latency). She addresses the developmental tasks of that period and changes in the psychoanalytic psychotherapeutic process needed to facilitate maturation in seriously disturbed children. Graham Music (2023), considers the changing nature of the clinical difficulties he sees in recent and current practice with children who are in middle childhood. He explores the important neurobiological changes of middle childhood as well as current cultural shifts which impact and inform the title of his article “Latency? If only: Rethinking middle childhood, its developmental tasks, neurobiology, cultural differences and how trauma and neglect undermines its course.” Barish (2023) once again introduces us to the work of Jaak Panksepp (1998), the renowned neurobiologist who coined the term “Affective neuroscience.” As he has done in previous work on adolescence (Barish, 2020) he explores in experience near and easily accessible terms, his integration of Panksepp’s contributions, the power of affects and his own