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96
anti-social behaviour. The children work off some old scores for
the parents. Parents are commonly not aware of this, but one
comes up against this powerful motive in parents when there is an
attempt to give advice or deal with the child. One is quite
frequently met with the overtly expressed desire of the parents to
co-operate in every possible way, but they often manage to find
some "reason" for not doing the one thing that has been recommended
This is not because of original wickedness on the part
of the parents but because they, themselves, so commonly have a
similar character structure because of their own childhood
experi ences.
This leads us to a consideration of what we might begin to
do about these widespread problems It surely follows that we
must attempt to get, as an important goal for the community, a
generation of healthy children so that we may, in the distant
future, get a generation of healthy adults, I am pleased to
report that a start has been made, on a necessarily small scale.
In October 1955, a weekly psychiatric clinic was started in this
Area, in which difficulties of children under five could be
investigated and dealt with. We have been given a considerable
amount of freedom as to how this may be organised, and the present
arrangement is that the visiting psychiatrist and each of the
medical officers who are working in the schools and maternity and
child welfare services, hold a joint clinic session for this
purpose, so that their combined knowledge is at the service of the
family, and each kind of doctor can have some worthwhile contact
with the knowledge and experience of the other related field of
work. For the most part, emphasis is on seeing children between
the ages of a few months and about three years in order that the
earliest developmental processes can be studied, and mothers
taught how to adapt themselves to the child's needs at this stage
so that development can take place in a healthy way,. Our knowledge
of what goes on in the child between these ages has extended
enormously, largely as the result of psycho-analytic investigations,
but our understanding has only acquired much depth within
the last few years, is still fragmentary, and there is much we
still do not understand. However, sufficient is known, of
extreme value. The problem of making sure that these discoveries
become common knowledge is one of our immediate tasks Similar
clinics are starting in other parts of the country, but it may
still be described as pioneer work.
The general principle is that the ordinary, healthy
new-born baby can quite reasonably be expected to grow into