ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the powerful impact on the environment of a profoundly ill girl in a near catatonic state, depressive stupor, or a profound "conservation withdrawal reaction". The psychotherapy involves work in the transference, looking at the "here and now" relationship through careful observation of the relationship existing between the child and the psychotherapist. The secret is for the multidisciplinary team to remain very patient while compassionately and comprehensively understanding and bearing the child's overwhelming feelings and anxieties about living, while empathically identifying with the family members who are frantic with worry about their very ill child who feels compelled to die. The family was unable to give a detailed picture of Yufang's developmental history. Perhaps her grandmother, with whom the parents lived in China before moving to London, might have had a better sense of Yufang as a child.
