Recognized by some as the pioneer of child psychoanalysis, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth remained faithful to psychoanalytic orthodoxy, and was Freud’s pet student as a result of her adherence to his code (Geissman & Geissman, 1998). Her first psychoanalytic publication, The Analysis of a Dream of a Five-Year-old Boy, appeared in 1912, when Anna Freud was just 18 years old and only three years after Melanie Klein discovered psychoanalysis upon reading Freud’s seminal work, The Interpretation of Dreams. This led Geissman & Geissman to conclude that she was the first child analyst to have worked systematically in the field and the first child analyst to use play to understand the inner world of the child.
Hug-Hellmuth was a proponent of the educational benefits of child psychoanalysis. In addition to analytic treatment, the analyst should also be a teacher and role model: “The goal of both child and adult psychoanalysis is the same: to recover mental health, to re-establish a balance of the psyche disturbed by impressions both known and unknown to us . . . Therapeutic and educational analysis should not just be satisfied with releasing the young human being from his suffering, it should also give him moral, esthetic, and social values . . . The analyst, teacher and psychoanalyst, should never forget that, above all else, child analysis is a constant analysis of character and education” (Geissman & Geissman, p. 60-61). Hug-Hellmuth was influenced on this subject by Freud’s conception, explored in Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1910), of psychoanalytic treatment as the prolongation of education (an “after-education”) for the purpose of overcoming residues of childhood.
Similar to many contemporary child analysts, Hug-Hellmuth adapted her method to the age of the child in treatment. For children under the age of seven, she believed conducting an analysis similar to the analytic treatment of adults was not possible, instead substituting educational methods founded on psychoanalytic knowledge. A proper analysis, according to psychoanalytic principles, can only be carried out after the seventh or eighth year. But even with children at this early age the analyst must turn aside from the usual routine, and satisfy himself with partial results, where he thinks that the child might be intimidated by too powerful a stirring-up of his feelings and ideas, or where too high demands upon his powers of assimilation are being made. Hug-Hellmuth’s fears were obviously fuelled by an official protest against child analysis that was made by William and Clara Stern in 1913. The Sterns contended that a child’s sudden awareness of unconscious motivations could only have a negative effect, stripping the child of his sexual naivety. In normal development, what is unconscious should remain so, they believed. Causing a disturbance to this normal process is tantamount to a direct assault on the development of the child’s psyche, with subsequent “infection of the victim.”
In spite of this warning, and while maintaining its dangers, Hug-Hellmuth used interpretation, but sparingly and with great caution, and she rarely gave clinical examples. Instead, she used three alternative methods of her own making that tricked the child into dropping his defences. If a young boy was ignoring her, she would pretend to have a fly in her eye, and the boy would become interested in this problem, take charge and offer helpful suggestions. If a child denied his “misdeeds,” Hug-Hellmuth would tell stories about the misdeeds of other children or herself and enable the child to identify with their plight before admitting that he too suffered from similar maladies. Lastly, if the child would not play, Hug-Hellmuth would pave the way by playing with him or by playing by herself (Maclean & Rappan, 1991).
These interventions may not be interpretations in the classic sense, but they do require the analyst’s capacity to interpret the situation and manufacture actions that respond to the child’s needs. Therefore, Hug-Hellmuth used interpretive actions (Ogden, 1994) to implicitly communicate her understanding to the child. These actions have a very modern flavour to them, as many contemporary child analysts find interpretive actions may be the only interventions that some patients respond to at a given time in the treatment (i.e. Chused, 1990).
Hug-Hellmuth’s work also foreshadowed contemporary analysts by encouraging the analyst to adopt an attitude that contradicted Freud’s prescriptions. In place of the neutral or abstinent child analyst, Hug-Hellmuth emphasized the importance of the analyst being kind and understanding, to have affectionate concern for “trifles,” to be constantly vigilant and to forget nothing, and not to mix up things that were said, especially in the initial sessions (Geissman & Geissman, 1998). ). The analyst must not be prohibitive, but should be sympathetic, encouraging, and allow for a sense of humour to emerge. She also stressed the analyst’s intuition and patience, which are, “ . . . the foundations which must be laid right from the first contact with the young patient, so that trust is housed between solid foundations and a solid roof” (Geissman & Geissman, p. 65).
These teachings suggest Hug-Hellmuth’s method of treating children, but she left it to Anna Freud and Melanie Klein to turn her play technique into a proper psychoanalytic method embedded within the burgeoning theories of child psychoanalysis.
