ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describe the work with Miral, a boy with feeding and other difficulties that had led different professionals to think at various points in time that his development was retarded, or that he had autistic features, or, more recently, that he had Asperger's syndrome. He highlight relevant themes from the once-weekly psychotherapy spanning two years and extract from his complex and fragmented clinical presentation aspects that could throw some light on his long-standing difficulties with taking in food and internalizing experiences. The author address through family sessions, before starting to see Miral for individual psychotherapy. Miral was the first child of an Asian couple in their early thirties who now also have a daughter Asha, two years younger than Miral. Initially Miral was not interested in playing or in the content of his therapy box of toys. When playing with the animals, Miral was interested in the thick-skinned and wild ones—the crocodile, rhinoceros, and dinosaur.
