ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the case study of Sophie. Sophie's mother was a busy, achievement-orientated woman, who appeared to be very pressured by the attempt to balance her professional and family life. A change of teacher at kindergarten caused her enormous separation anxiety, as did simply being taken to kindergarten by her mother in the morning. The scenes there made the mother feel uncomfortable and embarrassed. Sophie was a delicate, pretty girl with long, curly hair, whose play showed a significant need for harmony. Sophie made great efforts not to do anything wrong, talked in a childish voice, and appeared to be very shy. The therapist suspected that in Sophie, the relationship between id and superego had become rigid early on, without a stable, mature ego being able to mediate between the two demands. The therapist got a picture of a woman under extreme tension, unable to find a tolerable balance of the demands in her life.
