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ABSTRACT: The features of cultural identity in latency-age children along with the influences of cultural values, transmitted via the family, are the central focus of this essay. In this context, the understanding of how development can appear to bifurcate along a continuum of "individualist" versus "collectivist" cultures can be perceived in what Andreas-Salome referred to as the "dual orientation of narcissism". This essay also discusses the impact of immigration and the adaptation of the individual in a foreign country.
In psychoanalytical terms, latency is defined as a developmental period in which psychosexual maturation is marked by time-it occurs after the oedipal phase and ends with the beginning of puberty. It is a period in which the confusion and drama of childhood and adolescence are put on hold. Its meaning has always been connected to the building of defences and the repression of drives that bring about cognitive development [1], There is no doubt that the period between six and eight years of age is a crucial and demanding time in a child's development. In modern industrialized societies, it involves the beginning of formal schooling [2]. In an effort to cope with the new experiences they will face during the learning process, two things are expected from the child: a level of emotional maturity (a sense of independence from their parents coupled with the ability to establish their identity within a group) combined with a level of cognitive maturity (the ability to become literate). It is a period in which the interaction between individual and group identity is very demanding, since the major challenge within the social and emotional fields is that of being accepted by one's peers and establishing one's own identity [3].
Another point of interest concerning latency is Freud's question [4:37,n] of whether the latency period is an inherent universal phenomenon connected to the prolonged biological immaturity that characterizes human development, or whether it is associated with repressive cultures in which infantile and immature sexual behaviour is inhibited in order to be kept under control. In any case, there is a consensus among authors [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] that one of the most important features in the latency period is social development coupled with the internalization of cultural values.