For half a century, the history of child psychoanalysis was based on guidelines established by the Symposium on Child Analysis, which, in 1927, enthroned Melanie Klein and Anna Freud as its genuine mothers. One of the results produced was child psychoanalysis being consecrated as a field for women. However, before these women, there are those who we can consider the fathers of child psychoanalysis — but who were never recognized as such: among them, Karl Abraham, Carl Jung and Max Graf. What lies below this erasure? What effects did this have on child psychoanalysis practice? This paper raises the hypothesis that the seductive father fantasy dissuaded men from venturing into this field.
History of child psychoanalysis; male psychoanalysts; Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; Karl Abraham; Max Graf