By Margaret Lowenfeld

It has been a common complaint of Continental and American visitors that there is no provision for the study of medical psychology in London. Especially is this true for those wishing to study child psychology. The medical profession in England has sometimes been criticised for its reluctance to accept now ideas; but in no profession, perhaps, is a conservative attitude more to be desired. Yet while this attitude sources a certain margin of safety it may at times, by its rigidity, impede progress. It is, however, now being gradually realised that the mind of the child, as well as this body, has its disorders—disorders which cannot be lightly dismissed by parental admonition, but which demand the patient investigation and experiment so fruitful in their results in other departments of clinical medicine. The need for machinery and personnel to provide adequate treatment for “the difficult child” his long been sent by physicians working in this out-patient departments of children’s hospitals. To meet this, need the Children’s Clinic for the Treatment and Study of Nervous and Delicate Children was started three years ago. So successful has been its work, Carried out in the face of exceptional material difficulties, that it has now been possible to reorganise the children’s clinic under the ambitious title of the National Institute of Child Psychology.