PSYCHIATRIC WORK WITH CHILDREN

Abstract

One of the outstanding movements in the field of public health during the past decade has been the application of the principles of dynamic psychiatry to the problems revolving around the development of the child. In this field psychiatry is having its widest social opportunity to promote mental health and to create and disseminate through our complex civilization a better appreciation of how personalities are shaped—the things which motivate the variety of behavior responses, normal and abnormal—and to develop a better appreciation of the essentials for healthy human relationships in home, school, industry and other phases of normal life. This field has developed with great rapidity and at times has been associated with impulsive and unwise enthusiasms. It has opened some hope in the field of mental disorder, where hopelessness has usually been the dominant note; when some light is cast on a rather dark field, certain distortions are bound