The sexual drive undergoes a remarkable degree of maturation and development from birth to about 15 years of age. In the first years of life, drive energies are involved in a search for pleasurable discharge, concentered all in self. In early childhood and latency, drives find outlet through channels dominated by fantasy. At puberty, an organ system specific for the drive matures, providing an outlet channel to conduct libidinal energies toward love objects, which are beyond the limits of the self. Finally, in late adolescence, there is a chance to establish an articulation of the drive and organ system with the needs of the object.

In this chapter, aspects of the development of cognition that are pertinent to psychotherapy during latency will be explored. An attempt will be made to integrate developmental cognitive information into the theories of personality that are used as the basis of psychotherapies for children aged 6 to 12.

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.

Poetic symbols are verbal, visual or musical expressions that fit latent concepts and abstractions to representations that evoke awareness and clarify meaning.

Clinical data support the position that the latency state is a socially guided configuration of ego structures, and the related view that drive strengths are sustained during the latency period.

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.