ABSTRACT

Drawing on material from analytic sessions with a severely traumatized young boy, I explore in this chapter the connection between early emotional deprivation and the resultant mental representations of this deprivation in the inner world of the child. I attempt to demonstrate that the terrifying archetypal imagery I encountered in my work with this boy was rooted in experiences that occurred in his infancy, experiences that included maternal neglect compounded by early hospitalization and subsequent parental abandonment. I found that the boy lived in a world dominated by bizarre archetypal fantasies and persecutory hallucinations, along with the population of monsters and hostile space aliens intent on destroying him. I illustrate the process of transformation that took place in the transference-countertransference relationship, a process that led him out of his mechanical, archetypal world into a human reality.