In 1900, the Swedish sociologist, Ellen Key, prophetically named the 20th century the "century of the child."1As the psychiatrist sees it, the "century of the child" symbolizes a time of growing recognition that children may suffer from all kinds of psychiatric disturbance, of an evolving understanding of the psychopathology of children, and of efforts to heal its victims. In the United States, child psychiatry began in earnest with the child guidance movement, in an effort to deal with the problem of juvenile delinquency; and the child guidance movement drew its energies from psychoanalysis.2-5Thus, from its earliest inception in this country, the evaluation, diagnosis, and therapy of preadolescent and adolescent children with mental illness developed from the womb of the outpatient clinic, nurtured on a diet of psychoanalytic theory. Whereas the basic tradition of adult psychiatric care (often meaning custody) stemmed