Latency? If Only. Rethinking Middle Childhood, Its Developmental Tasks, Neurobiology, Cultural Differences and How Trauma and Neglect Undermine Its Course

ABSTRACT This paper examines middle childhood. It compares newer understandings with classic psychoanalytic accounts of latency. It introduces the biological hormonal phenomenon of adrenarche and links this to the tasks of middle childhood, such as the development of social capacities and executive functioning. It also looks at cross-cultural theory and how it might cast light on the original psychoanalytic conceptualization of latency. A central theme is that the children who are presenting for therapy these days are often a far cry from traditional latency children, and that both trauma and neglect, as well as the impact of screens and technology and other contemporary pressures, might mean that in fact children are losing out on the gains that can be made from what middle childhood once was. Some clinical work is presented to illustrate some of these issues.