ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of children with disabilities since Sandor Ferenczi wrote about the vulnerability of the unwelcome child to repeated childhood illness and low self-esteem. It offers parents guidelines for thinking from the time of the birth about a disabled or malformed baby. Emotional and psychodynamic assistance in the form of a number of interviews, or support groups for parents with similar needs should be available, as these parents are shocked and hurt. Discussion groups in which cases are examined individually and in which professionals can be helped to put into words their reactions and behaviours, allow individual professionals more emotional availability and creativity. The therapeutic method is designed so that verbal communication of states of mind and feelings can be checked immediately against the changes in the interaction between the mother and the infant. The chapter draws on some speculative conclusions through the treatments and other children over several years and through early infant–parent psychotherapies.
