The psychoanalysis of children represents an area of research and practice whose definition and progressive formation, through the twentieth century, were not established without clashes, conflict, and polemics. There have been successive waves of interest, with competing views, sometimes resulting in fixed oppositional positions, depending on the period.

The psychoanalysis of children is perceived by some as heretical, difficult to practice, even fundamentally utopian or impossible; by others, it is seen as an informative and reflexive paradigm, capable of enriching the theory and the technique of adult psychoanalysis. On one hand, it has been presented as intrinsically impure, on the other, much more rarely, it has seemed to be a kind of unrealizable ideal, fecund but somewhat vague.

These debates relate of course to the status accorded the mind of the child viewed on its own terms, and not only insofar as it is evolving...