ABSTRACT
In this account of the treatment of a latency-aged girl, the author discusses adaptations to clinical technique that are needed in order to help a child with a fragile ego and therefore poor affect regulation, through intensive child analysis. Using several detailed vignettes and the idea of the child analyst as a new developmental object, this chapter highlights the potential negative impact of early separation on a child’s ongoing development, which is then manifest in the clinical encounter. The work is focused on the place of play and especially the technique of the use of displacement, enabling analytic work to proceed although the child’s own direct experience may often be implied rather than spelled out. Handling both the emotional impact of physical attack upon the analyst as well as attending to helping the child understand potential meanings of their presentation is very challenging, and processing the countertransference responses can risk unhelpful repetitions. The author draws on both the Anna Freudian and Winnicottian traditions of child analysis.
