ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author points out how both children, the first because of the trauma of his neonatal asphyxia and the second because of her premature birth, have entered life in a painful way and in an emotionally deprived context. He shows how their developmental delay and their states of isolation within the analytic relationship never appear as preparatory for a new phase of development and expression of those unconscious conflicts and persecutory anxiety and confusional states which can be observed in early infancy. The author revisits the concepts by analysing some excerpts taken from the clinical material of a psychotherapeutic experience, which lasted a little more than three years, three times a week with a ten-year-old psychotic girl called Rebecca. The shared form of the transference and counter-transference relationship in the mind of the two protagonists is beneficial to both, hopefully leading to an enrichment of their personal Selves and of their internal objects.
