“Even though psychiatry and pedagogy have maintained the belief that children are inherently happy and without conflicts, as well as the assumption that the sufferings of adults are the results of real burdens and difficulties, it must be said that the truth is quite the opposite. What we have learned about the child and adult through psychoanalysis shows that all the sufferings later in life are in most cases the reoccurrence of these earlier ones, and that every person experienced sufferings of different intensities in early childhood.”
“The precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face”
Reverie is a concept that is especially important in early child development and is related to the ability of an adult to unconsciously understand – through their own phantasy – what is happening in an infant and what the infant needs. The parental capacity for reverie is of crucial importance for the development of the infant’s ability to learn and comprehend different parts of its self and its relation to others.
The psychology of the child is certainly the psychology of the adult, but it has many specificities that require special knowledge and experience in working with children.