ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the difficulties of working with emotionally neglected children. It delineates a patient group who can challenge conventional therapeutic technique and evoke countertransference feelings that are hard to admit to but are the most vital clue to how we must approach the work. These include boredom, deadness and cut-off, dulled-down states. It suggests that it is easy with such patients to be unwittingly drawn into enactments (Aron, 2001) and unhelpful role responsiveness (Sandler, 1993). It argues that we need to substantially adapt our technique when working with neglect, being more active, developing more positive and hopeful aspects of the personality and being livelier. Work with such children requires an understanding of how normal developmental trajectories might have been stymied by the lack of good ‘expectable’ experiences and how such stalled developmental trajectories can be re-started. Such children are not withdrawn but rather ‘undrawn’ (Alvarez, 1992) and require a particular kind of ‘live company’ to come alive and grow a mind.
