ABSTRACT
The chapter describes how the therapeutic person's task is to be fully present to one's deep emotional and bodily experiences, one's counter transferences. Being with the child involves rapt attention to every nuance of the communication between child and therapist. Mother seems slow to protect Anna physically from the intrusion of James. It may be that mother experiences the presence of Anna as a disturbance to mother's very intimate relationship with James, her older child. Mother has difficulty identifying with Anna. The child's non-speaking might be linked with his own or the family's denied feelings which can not be spoken about and have just been sensed by the young person, with no inner freedom to speak about what is being sensed. A fearful or angry flinch away from a therapist is progress from unfocused dissociation, for there is still hope that both the child and the therapist can notice and change something in the fearful situation.
