ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an historical overview of the demand, transference and contract with the parents in analyses with children, with particular emphasis on the work of the early child psychoanalyst Hermine Hug-Hellmuth. Melanie Klein objected that on the contrary, with a child an analytic transference is always possible like with the adult and quite independently of the parents. The practice of analysing one's own children took place more than just occasionally, particularly in the English speaking countries. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth grasps the fact that with a child in analysis the main difficulty resides in the establishment of the very conditions required to sustain a setting for the transference that will, in the most spontaneous manner, make play possible. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth notes that with the parents, the project of analysing their child does not present itself in the most propitious manner: even when they formulate it of their own will, their demand is made against their better judgement.
