Category Archives: Susan Isaacs

Susan Isaacs and The New Education Fellowship Conference in Queensland, August1937

04 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in 1930s, Susan Isaacs

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Susan Isaacs’ visit to the Antipodes in July, August and September 1937, occupies little more than several pages in biographies about her life and work published so far. But for Australians and New Zealanders it was a rare opportunity. Isaacs’ visit was larger than the New Education Fellowship Conference of which she was a key lecturer even through The conference itself was one of the most significant events in interwar Australia. Throughout the press across Australia Isaacs is recorded as speaking to full houses. She is the delegate who is chosen to be photographed with a koala. Her reunion with her sister after eighteen years would have touched many people who had long left family and friends behind in England. There was something very appealing and human about Susan Isaacs.

susan isaacs 1937

The Telegraph, (Brisbane)  7 August 1937, p. 8

It is hard to write a biography, or any historical work without access to sources.  Inevitably much of the focus in Isaacs’ biographies, of course, is upon her development as a psychologist and teacher in England during the 1920s and 1930s and, from the mid 1930s, as a psychoanalyst. She had completed her initial training and gained full membership of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1923. In 1927 after meeting Melanie Klein, she entered analysis with another analyst Joan Riviere so as to understand for herself the meaning of Kleinian thinking. Her ability to  argue for the  importance of Klein’s position during the ‘Controversial Discussions’ within the British Psychoanalytical Society during the  early 1940s, and show that unconscious phantasy influences daily life in all people, also led to her seminal paper, ‘The Nature and Function of Phantasy’, published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1943.

Isaacs visit to Australia could be said to have been a significant event in her life, if not her development. Travel was hard in the 1930s. The effort and time needed   meant that such journeys to Australia from England for short periods as several months rather than several years were rare. And Australia was so far away. Dorothy Gardner, Isaacs’ first biographer and a former student, may have suffered from lack of access to sources. Although her visit to Australia is well documented in Australian newspapers, Isaacs did not keep such press clippings for posterity. Had she done so, Gardner would have found records of her speeches, her social engagements and most significantly for Isaacs, her reunion with her younger sister, Alice, who had emigrated to Australia with her husband eighteen years earlier. Gardner’s 1969 account generally highlights the opportunity for Isaacs to renew friendships in the United States. Gardner relates that in New York Isaacs was the guest of the Child Study Association and had the opportunity to travel to Berkeley in California where research was being carried out. In New Zealand Isaacs lectured to audiences in Auckland and Wellington, and Gardner guesses, ”she certainly visited Christchurch and probably the other cities” (p. 116).She was greatly admired by Mr Campbell, the Head of Education in New Zealand, but there is little information about the issues that concerned New Zealand, and Australian, audiences that had resulted in such interest in her work.

Philip Graham, Isaacs 2013 biographer, has little more detail to add. He notes that several delegates, including Isaacs, did not hesitate to criticize the Australian education system. Their recommendations were taken up and used to reform Australian education so that it became more relevant to the two countries, he continues. An important point, also underlined by historian John Godfrey in his 2004 article on the Conference, is the very strong interest in the conference among the Australian public. One motivation for the Conference was the recognition among educators, government and politicians that Australian education was in need of revival.  In his introduction to the Conference proceedings, K S Cunningham of the Australian Council of Education Research, noted that ‘owing no doubt to our remote and somewhat sheltered situation in the world, we had failed to keep up with this forward movement that featured in other parts of the world. This stressed the liberal view of the school’s function in a democratic community, and ‘a recognition of how great a part popular education must play in promoting, not only the well being of individuals, but also the security and well being of nation as a whole’, (Cunningham, 1938, p. 1). Godfrey’s article might be ‘breathless’ in tone, as Graham caustically remarks, but for those in the Antipodes, the conference was part of a larger process of developing Australian nationhood. Rather than remaining dependent upon the old country for direction, Australian educationists sought to develop a system suited to local needs.  The critique provided by Isaacs and her colleagues was sought, if not understood to be part of the arrangement during their visit.

Isaacs was chosen for this role because she was  known to Australian audiences for her work as Principle of the Malting House School where she used the opportunity to record the children’s play and conversations – the basis of her books,  and Intellectual Growth in Young Children, were favourably reviewed in education and psychology circles. In January 1933 the West Australian newspaper published a reviews of The Nursery Years and The Children we Teach was a shorter version of Isaacs’ The Intellectual Growth of Young Children,  was reviewed by  a month later.  Although not named, the author of both items was likely to have been either Professor Cameron, Head of Education at the University of Western Australia or Professor Fowler, who led the Psychology department.  Isaacs’ book, ‘Social Development in Young Children also carefully reviewed in the West Australian, in November 1933. Isaacs’ points, that children had individual, emotional lives of their own, that all behaviour had meaning and that this could be understood in terms of children’s psychical development and internal phantasy life, were new ideas for people brought up with the notion that the task of a parent was to train and mould children into adulthood.

It is not as if Isaacs’ ideas about education were unknown, generally. When South Australian psychologist and educationist, Lois Allen returned in 1928 after nine years in England, her experience as a teacher at Malting House for two terms  was impressed upon readers of the Adelaide News. Allen stressed the recognition and enablement of the differing abilities of each of the children.  Perhaps this idea was not as ‘taken for granted’ in 1928 where rote learning was the norm, as it is in the twentyfirst century.  Malting House, Allen explained,

was a small experimental school for research and the children were between three and eight years of age. The object was to study the problems of children with a view to making better use of the natural curiosity with which those this age are endowed. They were allowed to investigate the realities of nature and had a little laboratory where they experimented with crucibles, bunsen burners, and so on, so that knowledge of scientific phenomena might be instilled in the early years. Among the children was a grandson of Sir Ernest Rutherford, the noted physicist. It was most interesting to notice the extreme difference between the children, and to observe the trend of each mind towards artistic or scientific subjects.

Isaacs had her own reasons for accepting the invitation to visit Australia from the Australian Council of Education Research. Professionally she was interested in Aboriginal culture and what might be learned about the human mind. She was deeply familiar with the work of Geza Roheim and later lectured on this to students of psychoanalysis. A second, more personal reason was the opportunity to see her younger sister Alice who had emigrated to Australia shortly after her marriage eighteen years earlier. The two travelled together for part of the tour, at least and in Brisbane stayed together in accommodation at the Women’s College at Kangaroo Point. Isaacs had been ill with cancer during 1935 and 1936. It was a rare opportunity to see her beloved sister and to take time from her psychoanalytic  work.

There were opportunities for Isaacs, too. She had the opportunity to broacast several of her talks to people living in remote rural areas – the outback. At the end of her Brisbane stay Isaacs reflected that

In England, there Is not such a thing as a woman radio announcer, and one- of the ‘moat pleasant recollections I will take away from Queensland will be of a broadcast talk I gave from the national station to the Country Women’s Association last Thursday, during which I had how wisely the Influence of the women’s session was being used to benefit the women of Queensland.

There were further opportunities for radio broadcasting, in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Universty of Adelaide. Perhaps Isaacs’ appeal, along with the intellectual integrity she brought to her work, was that she spoke to people about the very real concern of raising children. Her efforts to translate complex psychological ideas into plain English, the research which underpinned her analyses and her preparedness to communicate in a variety of ways contributed to peoples’ desire to learn more about thinking, human development and relationships. She spoke about infant development, telling audiences about the investigations that were occurring into the mental life of infants. Her concern, to help people to think about children’s behavior, found audiences in unexpected places.

REFERENCES

BOOK REVIEWS. PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILDREN. “The Children We Teach,” by Susan Isaacs, M.A., D.Sc. University of London Press.The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 – 1954) Saturday 21 January 1933 p 4 Article

BOOK REVIEWS. (1933, February 25). The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 – 1954), p. 4. Retrieved June 4, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32488480

BOOK REVIEWS. (1933, November 25). The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 – Preview Post1954), p. 4. Retrieved June 4, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32774408

Psychology of Infants. (1937, August 4). The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), p. 9 Edition: CITY FINAL LAST NEWS. Retrieved June 4, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article184565332

When a Child Is Obstinate And Defiant. (1937, August 5). The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 – 1947), p. 10 Edition: CITY FINAL LAST MINUTE NEWS. Retrieved June 4, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article184565910

The Telegraph, ( Brisbane, Qld: 1872-1947) Saturday 7 August 1937, page 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article184564179 accessed 3 June 2015.

Cunningham, K S, ed; (1938), Education for Complete Living: The Challenge of Today – The Proceedings of the New Education Fellowship Conference held in Australia August 1, 1937 – Setpember 20, 1937, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1938.

Gardner, D E M ( 1969), Susan Isaacs: The First Biography, London, Methuen Educational Ltd.

Godfrey, Johm (2004), Perhaps the most important and certainly the most exciting event in the whole history of education in Australia. History of Education Review, 33, 45-58.

Graham, Philip,( 2013) Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children, London, Karnac

Theatre For Children and the Freudian Influence – A Guest Posting from Dr John McIntyre

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in 1930s, Children's Theatre, Education, Susan Isaacs

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I am delighted to introduce my first guest posting. Dr John McIntyre, a Canberra based education research and policy consultant  and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra has kindly accepted my invitation to write a post for this blog. His subject is Rosemary Benjamin and influence of Susan Isaacs in Sydney’s Theatre for Children during the 1930s.

A brief exploration through Google shows that John McIntyre has worked for over 25 years in the professional preparation of adult and vocational educators at the University of Technology Sydney where he was a senior researcher and Director in the UTS Research Centre for Vocational Education and Training.  His research has focused on outcomes and participation in ACE in Australia, much of it commissioned by government. He has also published work on early school leavers and equity strategies of VET providers, research methodology and policy and research relationships in adult education.His recent work includes ‘Client engagement in a learner-centred system’ and a feasibility study on a national internet portal for adult learners. In 2007 he evaluated the Victorian ACE Research Circles for the  Adult, Community and Further Education Board, Engagement, Knowledge and Capability:Connecting Research and Policy to Practice. These and other publications can be found on his website.

John McIntyre is also deeply interested in theatre and the arts. After reading my posts about Susan Isaacs’ Australian tour in 1937 here and here, John contacted me with information about Rosemary Benjamin and the influence of Susan Isaacs’ thinking in the the Children’s Theatre Benjamin created in Sydney during the 1930s. You can find some more about Benjamin at this lovely site: http://www.artpages.com.au

Here is John McIntyre’s post….

Recently I have been exploring the history of the Theatre for Children, Sydney,  that was founded and directed for one twenty years by an Englishwoman of Jewish background, Rosemary Benjamin (1901-1957).

Arriving in Sydney in late 1936, Benjamin soon made friends with Jewish emigrés from Europe including the Finkes, the psychoanalysts whose daughter Ruth acted in the theatre, Gertrud Bodenwieser, the leading exponent of expressionist dance and composer and musician Sydney John Kaye (Kurt Kaiser). Rosemarie Benjamin is another link in the story of ‘Freud in Oceania’.

By the time she began her Sydney work, Rosemarie Benjamin had developed her ideas about appropriate theatrical performance for children, ideas formed by early twentieth century progressive education and profoundly influenced by Freudian thinking in London of the 1930s. For Benjamin’s generation, Freud’s discovery of the unconscious enriched new ideas of play, creativity and development and contributed to the ferment of the ’new education’ in a way that is now hard to appreciate.

Benjamin believed that children’s theatre should be authentic, performed as serious theatre by adult actors in plays and draw deeply upon myth and fairy-tale. Through such theatre, children could encounter their inner conflicts in symbolic terms, identifying with characters expressing ‘difficult’ emotions of guilt, fear, anxiety and horror. Allegorical figures drawn from myth could act as intermediaries in this cathartic process.  Authentic theatre understood in this way could serve the expressive needs of children and ‘child development’.  These ideas are outlined fully in Benjamin’s ‘Story of the Theatre for Children’ (available on-line at the State Library of Victoria).

In the years 1925-1936 Benjamin as a young woman was working as a play organiser for the London County Council, a new kind of educational work, while seriously pursuing a career in drama, twin strands that eventually merged in children’s theatre. Benjamin’s narrative always highlights her 1930s visit to Soviet Russia to study children’s theatre as a life-changing experience, though her explanations of children’s theatre are wholly Freudian.

Who influenced this Freudian strand in Benjamin’s thinking? In 1930s London, Benjamin must have come in contact with the leading edge of Freudian thought as it was being absorbed in progressive education, when Susan Isaacs was coming to prominence. Though direct evidence in Benjamin’s papers is lacking, I think there are three clear indications of Isaacs’ influence:

  • Benjamin emphasises emotions, especially difficult emotions (fear, guilt, anxiety, aggression) and the way these can be called forth in expressive play. Theatre employing plays based on myths and fairy tales permits children to encounter and deal symbolically with such forces. A broad understanding of phantasy (as it was later outlined by Isaacs in her famous 1948 article) appears to be assumed.
  • Isaacs discovered that ‘new education’ rather than being wholly permissive, children need to have a structured context to help them manage the expression of difficult emotions. Benjamin is insistent that theatre performances need to be structured with devices that help the child to respond to reactions aroused by the play. Such devices include allegorical figures like ‘Jester’ that ‘come in front of the curtain’ act as intermediaries between the real world and the fantastic world of the play. 
  • There is a commitment to systematic observational of children’s experiences as a way of testing and informing theoretical understandings. Benjamin encouraged audience participation and practised the serious study of children’s responses to characters to inform the crafting of performance. Underlying this is a strong conviction about the developmental value of children’s theatre.

It may also be that Susan Isaacs (as a columnist and educator) gave Benjamin the inspiration to promote new ideas to the wider audience, for Benjamin was a tireless advocate of her cause, and quite possibly a better publicist than producer. 

At the end of 1936, Benjamin left London for a Sydney holiday. By then, Isaacs was leading the new department of child development at University of London and had published two defining works in the field. She was a leading figure in the New Education Fellowship which the next year held its World Congress in Australian cities, with Isaacs as a key member. 

In Sydney, Benjamin no doubt participated in the Congress, and she was on the NSW committee of the NEF until the war years. This World Congress contributed much to enthusiasm for new educational thinking in Australia, and this took place alongside other streams of cultural modernism permeating the Antipodes. Benjamin must found among her Jewish emigré friends a congenial milieu in which her own novel enterprise might prosper. She returned briefly to Europe after the war for a study tour, but after resuming her work in Sydney suffered a long illness before she died in London in 1957.

Enquiries: John McIntyre, john@artpages.com.au

References

Benjamin (c1949)  ‘The Story of the Theatre for Children’. FilmStrip NSW. On-line at

digital.slv.vic.gov.au/dtl_publish/pdf/marc/3/2125895.html).

Free Education. Profile of Susan Isaacs. http://free-educations.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/educator-profile-susan-isaacs-18851948.html

McIntyre, J. (2014). Rosemarie Benjamin and the Theatre for Children in Sydney, 1937-1957. [Journal article, submitted]. Available at http://www.artpages.com.au/Theatre_for_Children/Theatre_For_Children.html

Susan Isaacs with the Delegates and their Wives at the New Education Fellowship Conference in New Zealand 1937

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in 1930s, Susan Isaacs

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How interesting it is to see the place of women in England and the colonies during the 1930s.  As a world renowned expert on child development, London psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs, a follower of Melanie Klein, was invited to speak at the 1937 New Education Fellowship Conference, an international movement founded by Beatrice Ensor in 1914. A reaction against the  boring rote-learning styles of the nineteenth centuries it  sought to encourage children find their own path in education. On the antipodean leg of its tour from Europe via America the conference travelled first to New Zealand before embarking on a national tour of Australia in August and September 1937. There was considerable interest in Isaacs from among the women’s movement, a group whose work also supported developments in child guidance and psychology. Unlike the Australian press coverage in which there are few, if any images, New Zealand editors included photographs in their reportage. She was one of two women delegates in a band of 21 who toured Australia and New Zealand: the other was Beatrice Ensor the Fellowship’s founder. Was it possible that she was photographed with the delegates’ wives, because it fitted, somehow, with the way things were done, then. Despite these reservations it means we can images of Isaacs  very different from the studio shots featured on the 2009 biography by Philip Graham: Susan Isaacs: A Life Freeing the Minds of Children.

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Isaacs incorporated Klein’s theories of children’s phantasy life into her work on education and child development. She believed that one could not be a psychoanalyst without such an understanding. Like Melanie Klein and later, D W Winnicott, Isaacs was influenced by the observational work undertaken in the 1920s by Merrell Middlemore, an obstetrician, trained psychoanalyst and member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Middlemore’s work. ‘The Nursing Couple’ recording closely observed interactions between newborns and their mother in hospital was published in 1941, three years after her sudden death from cardiac failure in 1938. In an interview for the Melanie Klein Trust the late Hannah Segal acknowledges Isaacs’s interpretations of Klein’s work, particularly her seminal paper, ‘The nature and function of phantasy’ published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 29, 1948, 73-97.

The New Education Fellowship Conference landed first in New Zealand on 10 July 1937. These were renowned experts, with a few professorships and knighthoods amongst them. The photograph, taken from the New Zealand Herald, 12 July 1937, p.12 is not fully annotated although the image of Susan Isaacs is clearly shown in the top left hand corner photograph. The first photograph on the top left-hand corner shows, L-R: Dr Harold Rugg, Professor of Education, Columbia University, New York;  Sir Percy Meadon, Director of Education, Lancashire, UK;  Dr Cyril Norwood,President, Sir Johns College, Oxford; Dr Susan Isaacs, Psychoanalyst and Head of Department of Child Development, University of London; Professor De S. Brunner, Professor of Education, Columbia University, Mr G.T. Hankin representing the Board of Education at the University of London; and Mr Laurin Zilliacus from Finland, Chairman of the NEF. The others show delegates doing spot of sight seeing, having lunch and generally socializing. They are rugged up in coats and hats because it was mid winter in the antipodes.

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It was the way of things  that women were treated separately to men. Delegates’ wives were a separate group. Both Susan Isaacs and Beatrice Ensor who founded the NEF in 1914 were  included amongst them. The photographs below, from top down show ‘Mrs E Salter Davies’ and ‘Mrs C.M Wilson’. Susan Isaacs is pictured on the lower photograph with ‘Mrs E. de.S. Brunner and ‘Mrs P.L Dengler’.  In the lead up to the war the Dengler’s presence created some controversy and tension amongst the delegates: they had come from Vienna in Germany.

 

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Isaacs’s lectures drew large audience. The Herald reported that of over 1600 attendees at the entire conference of twenty one delegates, 500 had enrolled for Isaacs’s talks on infancy and the pre-school child.( NZ Herald 6 July 1937). Likewise in Australia, Isaacs drew large audiences and, in Canberra, spoke at the Albert Hall, introduced by the Governor General’s wife, Lady Whiskard. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Adelaide. She returned to England where she became more deeply involved in the psychoanalytic movement. She died in 1948 from the cancer she had first developed in 1936.

 

“The Mental Life of Infants” – Dr Susan Isaacs’s Australian Tour, 1937.

09 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in 1930s, Conferences and Lectures, educational theory, Infancy, Susan Isaacs, western australia

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British Psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs, an associate of Melanie Klein, was one of fourteen international speakers – and one of two women in the list – in the New Education Fellowship Conference which proceeded around Australia from July to September 1937. After a stint in New Zealand, the Congress, hosting about 50 delegates from 15 countries was one of the largest Australia had seen. At this time the Fellowship, founded by the other woman delegate –  French born, English Educationalist, Beatrice Ensor in 1914 – had 51 national groups, including Japan, and published 23 magazines in 15 languages. The New Education Fellowship rejected discipline and drill methods of education. Rather it utilised ideas from Theosophy, Jungian Psychology and Psychoanalysis to stress the need for educationists to develop methods resonant with children’s’ developmental needs. The first session was held in Brisbane in early August 1937 before delegates returned to Sydney to convene from 9 to 16 August. The Conference then continued in Canberra from 18 to 21 August – an interlude before moving onto Melbourne for another strenuous period. Then it was to move onto South Australia and then Perth where Professor Robert Cameron was organising the event. The Federal Government underwrote the conference to the tune of 1250 pounds.

Isaacs combined her official visit with the opportunity to visit her sister in Sydney. It is clear, through perusal of newspaper reports of the Congress that Isaacs’s lectures – given at each port – were well regarded, attended and reported in each of the states. What is of interest is the differences between the east, where clearly Isaacs was the guest of women’s  organisations such as the National Council of Women in Sydney and the West – Adelaide and Perth where the organising committee was largely drawn from the University of Western Australia as well as the Educational and Maternal and Child Health Sector.

Isaacs was welcomed in Canberra  where she was a guest of the British High Commissioner and his wife, Sir George and Lady Whiskard. Clearly there was a desire, if not hunger amongst these Canberra people to learn from her. Isaacs’s lecture on Child Psychology was well patronized: by senior members of Canberra society, by mothers whose children were cared for in a crèche especially organised for the day, and by maternal and infant nurses who closed their centres to attend. Her lecture, pitched at the general public, reached for the link between emotional world of children and behavioural expression. The reporter summarised:

Isaacs referred to the enormous field covered by child psychology and the many intricacies of the subject.. There are many schools of thought in” child psychology and she stressed the need for a ‘balanced view-point and the danger of adopting a method of child training that was partial and extreme’.  Confining her remarks to the method.of dealing with the child under six or seven years, Dr Isaacs said that difficulties encountered in children in the form of temper were quite natural. In America, two groups of children had been studied from birth up to six years of age. One group had been referred to a child clinic, and the other not, but in both instances the same tempers and fits of screaming had been manifested. The displays of temper are caused by the intensity of feeling in the child – his unrestrained love and hatred – and as the child grows the difficulties become less intense.

For Isaacs – and the other delegates – there were luncheons in Sydney, lectures in Adelaide and at least one interview, urging that educationists linking play and emotional development with education and learning, published in the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus.

In South Australia the advent of the Conference coincided with the announcement by the Council of Mental Hygiene to establish an Institute of Medical Psychology and Child Guidance in Adelaide. It was to be located near the Hospitals, the Children’s Court and the Education Department – and would employ psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. Again, the popularity of Isaacs’s lectures was marked. She spoke to packed auditoriums, her message: ‘the importance of understanding the mentality of children during the first two years of their life. The essential needs of the child, she said, were love and a feeling of security’.

Remarkably as South Australian audiences noted, Isaacs issued a challenge to the theory that a child had no mental life before the age of about two years emphasising both the importance of motherly love for the understanding of the child mentality and the vital part those early two years played in later life. These lectures provide a glimpse into the state of infant research and infant observations in the pre-war years. We learn from reading press commentary, from noting off the cuff remarks and explanations about research into the mental life of infants prior to WW2 and Esther Bick’s development of Infant Observation Seminars at London’s Tavistock Clinic a decade later.  Announcing plans for her attendance at South Australian leg of the conference a the editor of the Adelaide Mail wrote, ‘One of Dr. Susan Isaacs’ strong con victions is that in order thoroughly to understand the child we must observe him under conditions in which adult interference is reduced to a minimum’.

At the Conference proper, Isaacs stressed infant subjectivity: ‘A baby fed in a “stiff institution manner’ with a bottle lost a rich emotional experience which affected its after development’. Research amongst delinquent girls was revealing a common experience of  lack of love and affection during the first two years of life. It was during this period she continued, that the maternal infant relationship was central to the child’s intellectual and emotional development.

The lecture was also summarised by a reporter for the West Australian a week later.

“Too often the mental life of the infant of a year, or even two.years, is left out.of the reckoning and we are only just beginning to realise the importance of the mental development during the first two years of life. Delinquency, mental ill ness and crime which is apparent in after life often had its beginnings in this stage of mental development,” Dr. Susan Isaacs said. The reporter continued:-

Briefly tracing the course of infants’ mental growth and explaining the difficult ties met with when trying to understand their reasoning, Dr. Isaacs stated that a baby learnt by its own spontaneous efforts which took the form of play starting as early as the second month. Baby should, therefore, be given ample opportunities for play. In the same way speech developed from the first playful sounds until the child began to distinguish familiar and oft-repeated sounds, which we called words. The emotional development of the child was the next consideration. During the first two or three months baby’s feelings were complex and were expressed by sounds. During the first two months any strong effects-bright lights, loud noises, etc.caused discomfort. but after this such things attracted attention until by the end of the first year the causes of pleasure outnumbered those of discomfort. Another interesting change, which occurred at about five months, was the cause of crying. Up to this time baby cried chiefly because of physical unhappiness, but after this age social pleasures and displeasures came into the picture and baby would cry, for instance, when mother left him alone, or because he wanted to sit up and could not manage it. A child’s smile was another signpost of its mental process, Dr. Isaacs continued. Up to the age of 20 weeks the average infant would smile at anyone while from that age until about 40 weeks old they would smile only at intimates, after which they seemed to grow more delicately discriminating and smiled at those they considered  deserved the honour.

There was more. The reporter continued: Dr. Isaacs traced the causes of feeding difficulties, which were often bound up with a child’s emotions and fear of its own early biting instincts. Parents should recognise the amount of learning a child had to do, and introduce new foods and new methods of feeding slowly. Dr. Isaacs did not advocate forcing a young child to eat what was dis tasteful to it, the difficulty usually being overcome by presenting it in a different form.

The challenge now is to discover whether and how these ideas were developed within Australian culture.  Perhaps not at all. And indeed it was not until someone from Europe, in the form of the first Training Analyst, Clara Geroe both arrived from Europe and stayed to develop her work that a space was created for the development of these very rich ideas within an Australian context. Isaacs’s visit occurred during a period in Australian history when England and Europe were regarded as Home;  where  scholars and professionals travelled for the education they would bring back to the Antipodes. The role of the visiting scholar is far more problematic: evoking idealization on the one hand and, may be envy on the other.

References:–

The Argus ( Melbourne) 3 September 1937.

Canberra Times: 12 August 1937; 20 August 1937; 25 August 1937.

West Australian: – 11 September 1937; 20 September 1937.

Advertiser ( Adelaide) 26 May 1937; 6 September 1937.

The Mail ( Adelaide) 3 July 1937.

Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 1937.