The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fiction
A sudden influx of portrayals of ‘extraordinary children’ emerged in British science fiction after the Second World War. Such children both violated and confirmed the new set of expectations about ordinary childhood that emerged from the findings of developmental psychologists around the same time....
| Auteur principal: | |
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| Format: | Journal article |
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BMJ Publishing Group
2016
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| _version_ | 1826280682813390848 |
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| author | Tisdall, L |
| author_facet | Tisdall, L |
| author_sort | Tisdall, L |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | A sudden influx of portrayals of ‘extraordinary children’ emerged in British science fiction after the Second World War. Such children both violated and confirmed the new set of expectations about ordinary childhood that emerged from the findings of developmental psychologists around the same time. Previous work on extraordinary children in both science fiction and horror has tended to confine the phenomenon to an ‘evil child boom’ within the American filmmaking industry in the 1970s. This article suggests that a much earlier trend is visible in British post-war science fiction texts, analysing a cluster of novels that emerged in the 1950s: Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953), William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) and John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (1957). It will be argued that the groups of extraordinary children in these novels both tap into newer child-centred assertions about the threats posed by abnormal childhood, underwritten by psychology and psychoanalysis, and represent a reaction to an older progressive tradition in which children were envisaged as the single hope for a utopian future. This article will ultimately assert that the sudden appearance of extraordinary children in science fiction reflects a profound shift in assessment criteria for healthy childhood in Britain from the 1950s onwards, an issue that had become vitally important in a fledgling social democracy. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T00:17:22Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:7b50e1d8-a477-4529-9c84-d04a8d970891 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T00:17:22Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:7b50e1d8-a477-4529-9c84-d04a8d9708912022-03-26T20:49:46ZThe psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fictionJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:7b50e1d8-a477-4529-9c84-d04a8d970891Symplectic Elements at OxfordBMJ Publishing Group2016Tisdall, LA sudden influx of portrayals of ‘extraordinary children’ emerged in British science fiction after the Second World War. Such children both violated and confirmed the new set of expectations about ordinary childhood that emerged from the findings of developmental psychologists around the same time. Previous work on extraordinary children in both science fiction and horror has tended to confine the phenomenon to an ‘evil child boom’ within the American filmmaking industry in the 1970s. This article suggests that a much earlier trend is visible in British post-war science fiction texts, analysing a cluster of novels that emerged in the 1950s: Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953), William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) and John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (1957). It will be argued that the groups of extraordinary children in these novels both tap into newer child-centred assertions about the threats posed by abnormal childhood, underwritten by psychology and psychoanalysis, and represent a reaction to an older progressive tradition in which children were envisaged as the single hope for a utopian future. This article will ultimately assert that the sudden appearance of extraordinary children in science fiction reflects a profound shift in assessment criteria for healthy childhood in Britain from the 1950s onwards, an issue that had become vitally important in a fledgling social democracy. |
| spellingShingle | Tisdall, L The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fiction |
| title | The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fiction |
| title_full | The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fiction |
| title_fullStr | The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fiction |
| title_full_unstemmed | The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fiction |
| title_short | The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the 'extraordinary child' in postwar British science fiction |
| title_sort | psychologist the psychoanalyst and the extraordinary child in postwar british science fiction |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT tisdalll thepsychologistthepsychoanalystandtheextraordinarychildinpostwarbritishsciencefiction AT tisdalll psychologistthepsychoanalystandtheextraordinarychildinpostwarbritishsciencefiction |