ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an important institutional context and records an important moment in the development of child psychotherapy in the United Kingdom. It addresses the Kleinian and post-Kleinian thinking of the framework which together made clinical work of this kind possible. The chapter explains a case probably fairly representative of many children adopted by parents eager to help children who had suffered a catastrophic start in life. The clinical process with Tim highlights some central Kleinian and post-Kleinian concepts, which have proved particularly relevant to work with abused and deprived children. The child who has had many changes of primary carer early in life has, however, a particular area of loss with respect to memory. The dominant configuration at the start was one in which parental intercourse was represented as continuous, violent, ugly, and perverse, something inflicted on the child in order to torment him with feelings of exclusion, powerlessness, and humiliation.
