Latency and Adolescence

Abstract

Latency signifies calm. In this instance mental calm in the midst of frenetic physical activity, as described in the quote above by psychiatrist Elizabeth Bremner Kaplan. Freud introduced the term to describe the relative mental calm and slow but steady physical growth that characterize the years between the hurricane of the Oedipal phase and the cyclone of adolescence. Latency begins with a soothing psychological event, the resolution of the Oedipal complex, and ends with a physiological upheaval, the onset of puberty.

When I think of elementary school children, I see them rushing and tumbling at recess, balancing on railings, sliding, swinging with zest, chanting their rhymes, sucking lollipops, comic books in their hands, tearing around chasing one another. I hear the sounds of roller skates on the pavements, hopscotch chalked on sidewalks, the girls skipping ropes to chants.(1)