ABSTRACT
This chapter describes work with few children referred for unmanageable behaviour. It offers how explosive tantrums can be entwined with difficulties with separation and separateness, associated with the collapse of omnipotence, alarming to the child because his sense of his own self disappeared. This presentation was closely linked to the mother’s earlier depression that followed the birth of a younger child. The chapter describes, familial circumstances appeared to have affected the containment of anxiety in the child’s infancy. Once anxiety was contained, the chapter shows that symbolizing his aggressive feelings and his terrors rather than acting them out was associated with a reduction in the disturbed and unmanageable behaviour, while developments in his drawing indicated stronger boundaries and a clearer concept of himself. It describes how under-fives counselling can contain parents’ anxieties about their children’s aggression by providing a context in which “wild thoughts” can be domesticated, given a home, and made sense of, as described by W. R. Bion.
