Abstract
Difficulties in teaching and learning about childhood psychosis are related not only to emotional factors, such as various countertransference phenomena and exposure to the child's primitive and chaotic material, but also to conceptual factors, that is, unresolved contradictions in the usage of the concept of psychosis in work with children. The conceptual problems can be viewed as arising from the fact that the concept “psychosis” grew out of adult psychiatry and only belatedly has been applied to children. This transposition has eventuated in two basic sources of confusion: (a) the carry-over, unnoticed, of certain ambiguities already present in the term “psychosis” as applied to adults; and (b) the failure to make adequate allowance for the new and different context in which the term is applied in work with children. The various conceptual problems resulting from these two sources of confusion are made explicit and are discussed, with the aim of making such problems more manageable by the student. Emotional factors, as they impede the attainment of conceptual clarity, are also discussed.
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Aug, R.G., Ables, B.S. Problems in teaching and learning about childhood psychosis. Child Psych Hum Dev 2, 4–13 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01442054
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01442054