ABSTRACT
In clinical practice with children, it is common to hear a clinician say that “the child presented with” certain symptoms. If Hermine Hug-Hellmuth gave psychoanalysis of the child a logical basis through her proclamation of the impossibility for anyone to properly analyse his own child, she took this further by clarifying the place of the parents in relation to the analysis. Usually, however, it is one of the parents, and in most cases the mother, who makes the phone call to refer the child for treatment. Hug-Hellmuth became the third female member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on 8 October 1913. She was able to formulate a circumscribed place for the parents in regard to the child’s treatment. She proposed working with the parents, specifically within the transference of each, recognising that their transference is quite separate to that of the child.
