Description
In her introduction, Dr. Geleerd summarizes the principles of child analysis and explains the differences in technique between child and adult analysis. She states that there is currently no publication which presents a complete case of classical child analysis recorded in dialogue form. For a variety of practical reasons, such total reporting cannot be undertaken easily. However, this volume presents detailed clinical reports of particular phases of analysis, including some crucial analytic sessions reported in dialogue.
The first two papers deal with the analysis of very young children. Grace McLean Abbate describes the first year of analysis of a nearly three-vear-old child who controlled her parents through cycles of fear reactions, sadness, violent aggressive outbursts, and sleep disturbances. The author illustrates, by means of this case, that it is possible to analyze a young child without active participation of the parents if the latter are convinced that analysis is necessary. John B. McDevitt, in contrast, presents clinical material from the analysis of a threeyear-old girl with a separation problem where the treatment had to be carried out in the mother’s presence.
The two papers which follow deal with the analysis of children whose mothers died. Robert A. Furman reports the case of an earlylatency boy whose mother died in the course of his analysis. The author focuses on the difficulty of controlling the boy’s behavior during analytic sessions and on the patient’s mourning reaction. Marjorie Sprince presents a case of pseudo stupidity in a thirteen-year-old boy whose mother died several years before the analysis. The impact of the mother’s death was taken up in the transference. She demonstrates how the patient’s gross pathological behavior yielded to treatment by interpretation of affects and defenses.
