There are two unknown children who are the protagonists of these pages. One is behind every child’s behavior and symptom. The other is within us, and often each of us unconsciously projects it onto the children who walk alongside us in life. Through the interpretation of real children’s stories, the book helps us understand how every behavior, from a psychological point of view, is constructed in a completely unconscious way in our inner world, from the earliest years of our existence.

Leaving childhood behind, nostalgia, betrayal, fear—all issues equally important to the birth of childhood tension, anxiety, and confusion—are some of the topics analyzed. It becomes clear that understanding the emotions that adults once experienced as children becomes a powerful “key” and is what will ultimately allow them to delve deeper into the inner world of the child. The author focuses on the child’s problems not in isolation but always in relation to their immediate environment, both family and school, and opens up therapeutic, remedial interventions for everyone, parents, children, but also professionals in the field, educators, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.

The book was the first in a long series of works, from which the following have already been translated by University Studio Press “The Anger of Children,” which focuses on adolescence, and “The Child Who Was Lost and Found,” which focuses on childhood memories.

● Alba Marcoli is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist.