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adult world—violence and temper, stealing, truanting, destruction
of property are all, in effect, acts of revenge. It is from this group
that future delinquents are drawn.
(2) By Submission. The child may have his spirit broken
by dominant adults. The timid, inaccessible, withdrawn child
may be less trouble than his aggressive brother, but is likely to
have an empty and inadequate adult life. Many members of this
group will find their way into mental hospital in later life.
(3) By "Conversion." The patient develops a symptom
which symbolises his attitude of attack or flight. This type of
patient "drives out nature with a pitchfork "and finds it flying
back through the window. They want to put unpleasant ideas
"out of" their minds, but succeed only in putting them into the
bottom of their minds, e.g., a little boy of 7 witnessed an unpleasant
scene of violence between his parents. A few days later he
developed a facial tic. When he was seen at the age of 10, a
moment's observation showed that the essence of the tic was shutting
the eyes and turning the face away. His muscles remembered
the incident which his mind appeared to have forgotten. In this
group we see the hospital-haunters in the making.
Treatment will vary with these reactions. In the first group
the problem is to release the child's love. On the whole, provided
the child is young, this is the easiest group to treat. Children
naturally love their parents and naturally want to love their parents.
If the strain on them is eased they can forgive their parents, and
themselves.
In the second group the problem is to release aggression.
These children are terrified of their own hostile feelings and, as
it were, drain themselves of energy in preventing their hostile
feelings from coming to the surface.
The child with conversion symptoms must relive the painful
experiences he has repressed and come to terms with his own
excessive reactions. This may be a rapid or may be a lengthy
and slow-moving process, but once the buried memory is unearthed
and displayed, the symptom vanishes dramatically.
No attempt has been made to cover all the work of the Child
Guidance Clinic. Many aspects of the work, such as the procedures
of diagnosis and the many functions of the different members
of the team, must be dealt with at a later date. The purpose of
this report is to give some idea of Child Guidance treatment. It
is hoped that this account, inadequate though it must inevitably
be, will give some idea of the value of the work. Its aim is to
make plainer the technique and methods applied in the solution
of the problems, often tragic, but always fascinating, with which a
Child Guidance Clinic is confronted.