The adult/child dyad in Rousseau and Freud and its resonances in the contemporary child’s psychoanalytic clinic

Abstract

Tis article addresses the writings of Rousseau about the child and the psychoanalytic conception of infantile in Freud, highlighting their reflections about the adult-child dyad. Considering the child’s polite nature afrmed by Rousseau in the work Emile or on education and the impossibility of educating the unconscious impulses, declared by Freud, we examine the repercussion of these ideas in the context of the current child’s psychoanalytic clinic’s literature. We concluded that the adult conceives the child as being his/her investment object, alternating between the legitimation of the child’s particularity and the strategies to controlling it. Tis aspect is still present in the clinical psychoanalytic processes with children.