ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses factors that seemed relevant to the important developmental achievement of two children who learned to walk down the corridor between waiting room and therapy room without needing to rely on the crutch of a toy from home. Two contrasting means of managing threats to the sense of self are in evidence in these two vignettes: reliance on bodily sensation in the case of Giovacchini's patient, and the provision of attention in the Orthogenic School. The chapter also discusses the move from the reliance on sensation to the reliance on internalised figures during the psychotherapy of two children for whom walking unaided – and particularly walking down the corridor – was a major concern. It presents some of the extreme bodily anxieties that can be aroused when children or adults with a fragile sense of identity attempt to move their body through space.
