Childhood has meaning of its own

Freud launched one of the great cultural revolutions of the twentieth century: Childhood was now vested with meaning on its own terms as well as the key source of adult emotional suffering and mental health. The early psychoanalytic ideas are explained in relation to their approach to childhood and the relationships between past and present. The theory of infantile sexuality intertwined with conceptions of the irrational drives, the unconscious and the sources of personality in childhood, and especially, of the traumatic origins of psychopathology. Historical and cultural contexts on Freud’s early work are considered, and the Oedipus Complex is examined. The origins of child psychoanalysis in the direct interaction with children, especially by women, are an important aspect of this history.