Dreams in Sand

Extract

The inadequacy of verbal development is the most striking handicap to the analysis of children. In the young child, under seven years, many concepts such as “happy,” “sad,” and “worried” are frequently not recognized at all; the child's very vocabulary is too limited for expressive purposes. Even as late as pre-adolescence the child may fail to correlate its inner experiences with its vocabulary. Besides the limitation of vocabulary due to intellectual immaturity there is also the Super-Ego's restraining action on what may be expressed verbally, in cold blood, and the younger the child the greater is this restraint. Most children, however, given an adequate medium other than words, are richly expressive of themselves but, unfortunately, it is now the adult who is inadequate and frequently fails to understand the language that the child is using, or, understanding it, cannot express himself in it. He “interprets” for the child in the more adult language of words, and sometimes even at a more adult level of erotic and emotional development than the child's. When this happens the child usually demonstrates its inability to correlate the inner experience which it is expressing in its own language with the adult's verbal interpretation. It either takes no notice or is frankly puzzled, or gives up its expression as if stunned by the unexpected.