ABSTRACT
A young girl was in psychotherapy on a twice a week basis. Her massive inhibition in learning to read and a certain excitability were a source of concern for her parents. The sole recourse to the primary process obliged her to effect constant reversals, but the excitation could not find relief through fantasy activity. The equilibrium between primary processes and secondary processes is not sufficiently stable to enable her to deploy associativity, representations and appropriate games. The clinical picture that results from this is particularly contrasted. While in certain children, in spite of a relatively discrete symptomatology, a clearly psychotic turn is observable, in others, on the contrary, it is too much conformity in a “false self” mode that masks a certain denial of the place of internal objects and a “disconcerting absence of curiosity concerning what their parents are hiding”.
