Book
Social Development in Young Children: A Study of Beginnings
The companion volume to Intellectual Growth in Young Children, dedicated to Joan Riviere. Susan Isaacs draws on her records of thirty-one children at the Malting House School over three and a quarter years, and on more than four hundred letters from mothers and nurses, to describe the beginnings of children's social life. Part I gives the psychological data. The records are arranged under social relations, as love and hate in action, and under the deeper sources of love and hate. The first heading covers egocentric attitudes, individual and group hostility, and friendliness and co-operation. The second covers sexuality, guilt and shame, and the record of a single child. A chapter then sets out the theory of development. Drawing on Melanie Klein's child analysis, Isaacs treats other children as first of all rivals for the love of adults, reads much hostility as projected guilt, and looks to the family rather than the herd to understand social life. She finds guilt arising whatever the upbringing: harsh treatment intensifies it and milder methods lessen its hold. Part II takes up the educational problem. It holds that education and psychoanalysis are distinct processes, and discusses the problems and crises of early social development, arguing that the young child does not learn best by corporal punishment.
Main ideas
- To the young child other children are mainly rivals for the love and approval of adults.
- Children's hostility springs from possession, power, rivalry and anxiety, and much of it is projected guilt; the scapegoat stands for the child's own bad self.
- Human social life is to be understood from the family rather than from the herd.
- Behind social love and hate lie deeper sources in infantile sexuality, guilt and shame, which the book traces with the help of Melanie Klein's child analysis.
- Guilt arises spontaneously whatever the upbringing; harsh early treatment intensifies it and milder methods lessen its grip.
- Education and psychoanalysis are distinct processes, and knowledge of the unconscious as such is of limited direct use to the practical educator.
- It is false that the young child learns best by corporal punishment; early physical chastisement by parents does deeper harm than a later whipping.
What it shows
Joan Riviere analysed Susan Isaacs
A more formal personal analysis in London, which Isaacs undertook after joining Klein's circle. The sources give different start dates: 1922 in Psychoanalytikerinnen, 1927 in other accounts. She dedicated Social Development in Young Children (1933) to Riviere.