Introduction : the war inside

During World War II and the brutal experience of German attacks against civilians on the home front, Britain underwent a consequential, yet unstudied, development. This total war elevated British psychoanalysis to a role not enjoyed anywhere else in the world. Under the shock of bombing and evacuation, exiled continental analysts such as Anna Freud (Sigmund Freud’s daughter) and Melanie Klein and native analysts such as John Bowlby (the “British Dr. Spock”) and Donald Winnicott were called upon to treat a diverse group of men, women, and children. Children occupied a privileged position in this expert work. They came to be seen, on the one hand, as vulnerable and in need of protection; on the other hand, as anxious, aggressive subjects requiring control. The war proved a decisive moment for the history of psychoanalysis, and, in turn, its evolving theories and practices helped produce new expectations for selfhood, citizenship, mental health, and the emergent social democracy. While scholars of World War I have highlighted the effects of shellshock on culture and society, we have yet to understand how the brutalities of World War II, and the theories of selfhood developed under its guise, reshaped postwar Britain. By examining together both the ideas and practices of child psychoanalysts and their wide impact on public opinion and social policy, The War Inside reconstructs this essential social and cultural legacy of World War II. While looking at analyst–patient interactions in the clinic, significantly, this book takes the history of psychoanalysis beyond the couch. It follows psychoanalytic practice in a variety of social and institutional settings such as the war nursery, the juvenile court, the state committee, the radio, and the hospital. Spanning the periods before, during, and after the war, it reveals how psychoanalysis became important for much public and welfare-state thinking about democracy, mental health, childhood, and the family. Psychoanalytic experts made the understanding of children and the mother–child relationship key to the successful creation of social democracy in two ways. First, by asserting a link between a real “war outside” and an emotional “war inside” individuals, analysts helped