ABSTRACT

Otto Weininger illustrates the manifestations of unconscious phantasy in children - normal, neurotic or psychotic - in various settings such as playgroups, ordinary schools or special schools for disturbed children, the family milieu or play therapy. He uses Melanie Klein's developmental theory and shows the evolutions of phantasies in their content, in the way they are symbolizes, and their functioning in terms of the child's evolution from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position and Oedipus complex.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

part One|30 pages

Good, bad and enough

chapter One|18 pages

Splitting and idealization

part Two|52 pages

Aggression, expression and love

chapter Three|14 pages

Aggression and regression

chapter Five|20 pages

Reparation and restoration

part Three|28 pages

Anxiety and independence

chapter Six|18 pages

An uneasy bedtime and two bad mornings

some anxieties of the early Oedipal

chapter Seven|8 pages

Achieving an independent self

some problems of adolescence

part Four|38 pages

Feeling, thought and creativity

part Five|144 pages

Play psychotherapy

chapter Ten|28 pages

Some basic patterns of play psychotherapy

chapter Eleven|114 pages

The snake family

excerpts from play psychotherapy sessions with a ten-year-old boy