ABSTRACT

A very young girl, Sally, anxiously demands that her mother endlessly submit to her wish not to experience limits, separations or frustrations (the reasons for this type of relationship link to both the mother's and the child's traumatic histories). During her analytic session, she begins to play in what is for her an unusually imaginative way. When the female analyst announces the end of the session, she is not unexpectedly met by the child's protests that she wants to continue the session. Sally, then, hits and spits at her analyst as she experiences the intervention of a limit as a cruel blow. After the analyst addresses Sally's disappointment and rage towards her, she reluctantly leaves the playroom. The analyst's mindfulness of not only the analytic frame but also of her own time schedule confronts Sally with the fact that there are other ``things'' outside their relationship. The next day, Sally arrives at her session proudly showing her analyst a paper ``father'' doll that she has made. She then proceeds to bash the doll with a block and cut off its head. At this moment, Sally appears to perceive her analyst as either a limit-setting father ®gure (in her actual family, her father is more able to function in this position than her mother) or a mother ®gure giving priority to the ``father'' rather than the child. Either way, she wishes to decapitate the ``father'' ®gure so that there can be no relationship to another and no thinking (as suggested by the symbol of the head) about boundaries and external reality and hence, no threats of exclusion. In this brief vignette, we see how this little girl's mind is gendered along conventional lines where the ``father'' stands for authority, separateness and external reality and concomitantly, the ``mother'' stands for attachment,

even enmeshment and no limits. This little girl is not alone in making this association, for example we not infrequently hear at our professional meetings the shorthand image ``father'' used non-re¯exively to convey authority, strength and boundedness.