The main focus of this chapter will be on a search for an understanding of the psychopathogenetic role of past experience and memory in sensitizing a child to find affect stimulation in current situations.

Psychotherapy of children is aimed at achieving repetition and mastery of remembered past traumas through the analysis of symbolization, play, and direct recall. Through this is achieved resolution of early- and latency-age conflicts, during latency. This chapter will provide an in-depth presentation of an important cognitive developmental step, that is, the shift in the polarity of symbols from the evocative to the communicative mode. This is an early sign of the shift from latency to adolescence.

Parents have a special influence on certain areas of development during the latency years. Cognitive styles of perception and understanding and the organization of memory take root in parental preferences, precepts, and examples that are conveyed to the child during the latency years.

Transcendent symbols are cryptic representations, which are interpreted by devout believers to be manifestations of the transcendent immanence of deity in all things. The words and powers of gods are thought to be conveyed to man by the manifest forms of transcendent symbols

The term “symbolizing function” refers to the actions of the brain mechanisms that produce symbols. The ontogenesis of the symbolizing function is a product of an interplay between the biological maturation of the brain and shaping developmental influences contributed by the environment.

The latency age period encompasses the confluence of two processes: the experience of childhood and the traversal of the developmental defile from which will issue the characteristics of adulthood. Those who assess the latency-age child must be alert to impediments to and digressions from normal and effective functioning in both processes.

Using earlier impressions as a source, memories shape the representations used to interpret the world. Affects associated with recall of these memories activate denial. Substitute formations (symbols) to which attention is directed in response to denial populate the memory contents that shape conscious psychic reality.

Poor reality testing in the area of response and an intensified impact of reality in the interpersonal area introduce conflicts that cannot be resolved in reality. The age appropriate cognitive function of the early latency child enables the resolution of this conflict through the intensified use of repression, fragmentation, and displacement. These defenses produce psychoanalytic symbols. The synthesis of such symbols into distracting fantasy patterns, becomes a primary adjustment technique in childhood.

The symbolic forms, which are accessible to scientific study, are the natural (simple and cryptic) symbols. They can be defined, their characteristics described, and their existence recognized by scientifically trained workers.