ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a parent, but it is an absent parent who is the focus of the work. Responding to Frankie in an age-appropriate way allowed him to maintain the regression, just as shifting to a more adult way of speaking, at the end of the work, helped him to recathect his Adult ego state. As is typical of young children, Frankie first denied that his father was really dead. In adulthood with this denial shifted underground and out of awareness, Frankie experiences himself as a psychological orphan, needing the support and "specialness" that a child gets from a good and loving parent. Frankie's work in this segment is of interest not only because it illustrates another facet of the therapeutic treatment of parent-child issues, but also because Frankie can be seen to be dealing with his fantasy father from several distinctly different developmental stages.
