James Robertson (psychoanalyst) - Film - A Two-year-old Goes To Hospital (1952)

A Two-year-old Goes To Hospital (1952)

James decided to make a film record of a young child's stay in hospital. It would allow the evidence to be examined and re-examined. He hoped it would pierce defences that the spoken word could not. With a grant of £150 he purchased a cine camera and 80 minutes of black-and-white film. He had never used a cine camera before.

The resulting film is regarded as a classic. It has been designated “of national and historic importance” and a copy is being preserved in the National Archives.

Laura, aged 2, is in hospital for 8 days to have a minor operation. She is too young to understand her mother's absence. Because her mother is not there and the nurses change frequently, she has to face the fears, frights and hurts with no familiar person to cling to. She is extremely upset by a rectal anaesthetic. Then she becomes quiet and "settles". But at the end of her stay she is withdrawn from her mother, shaken in her trust.

In recent years there have been great changes in children's wards, partly brought about by this film. But many young children still go to hospital without the mother, and despite the play ladies and volunteers the depth of their distress and the risks to later mental health remain an insufficiently recognised problem.

This film study of typical emotional deterioration in an unaccompanied young patient, and of the subtle ways in which she shows or conceals deep feelings of distress, remains as vivid and relevant as when it was made.

“The restraint and objectivity of the film may at first reassure, for the child is unusually composed for her age, but few nurses will doubt the degree of her distress, the signs of which they have so often felt powerless to relieve.”—Nursing Times. “. . . explodes the belief that a ‘good’ child is well-adjusted.”—Nursing Outlook. Though the standard of care in the hospital was high she undoubtedly fretted." -British Medical Journal. “. . . convincing and brilliant demonstration ad oculos of the outward manifestations of the inner processes that occur in infants who find themselves unexpectedly and traumatically without their families.”—Anna Freud, LL.D., International Journal of Psychoanalysis."...a connected and credible demonstration of stress, separation anxiety, early defensive manoeuvres, and topics akin. .also a social document of honest power. Without preaching, it bears a message of reform. . ."—Contemporary Psychology.