Latency (Ages 6–11)

Abstract

The latency phase of development encompasses the years 6 to 11, “latent” in the sense that this is an interval of relative calm between the intense psychological turmoil of the Oedipal phase and the profound biopsychological upheaval of adolescence. Relative is the key word since although the comparisons between the external appearance of growth and development during latency and the Oedipal phase and adolescence are accurate, major developmental advances occur during these years. Freud (1905) introduced the term, relating the beginning of latency to a psychological event, the resolution of the Oedipal complex, and its end to a maturational one, the occurrence of puberty.

When I think of elementary school children, I see them rushing and tumbling at recess, balancing on railings, climbing, sliding, swinging with zest, chanting their rhymes, sucking lollipops, comic books in their hands, tearing around chasing one another. I hear the sound of roller skates on the pavements, hopscotch chalked on the sidewalks, the girls skipping ropes to chants. (Elizabeth Bremner Kaplan, 1965, p. 220)