ABSTRACT
Children like Katy have problems with identification, with taking inside good internal figures. They find it hard to make deep relationships, but instead tend to relate to the surface qualities of people, a kind of ‘adhesive identification’. Many of the girls in this series tended to be conforming in this way and to get by unnoticed in school and elsewhere. One might make a broad distinction between the boys’ generally more open and active attacks on or defences against developing close relationships, and the girls’ more inward or ‘passive resistance’ style of response. The appealing behaviour of some of the girls tended to elicit more attempts at help and caring from the environment (in contrast to the ‘doubly deprived’, hard-to-reach boys), but they were often experienced as unrewarding, unable to hold on to and to develop what they received. Often these young girls have so little capacity for mothering that unconsciously they soon feel themselves in rivalry with the baby.
