Little girl and better mother

I have called this chapter ‘Little girl and better mother’ because that wording captures something about the quality of the work from its inception. The therapy was based on the premise, both in the patient’s mind and mine, that the route to cure was the reparative experience. The description of the work in this chapter lays the basis for

describing the shifting transference relationship between us as a major shift in understanding and conceptualisation of the therapy that was to occur. It rests on Jane’s experiences, both in writing and in the sessions, of being regressed and feeling like a young child in relation to me. Through this chapter and Chapter 4, I trace how the transference

became transformed as I changed in style, largely through the change in supervision and consequentially through my changed view about what this therapy needed in order to bring it to a successful conclusion. I will extract some of these sequences from the letters to illustrate how Jane was experiencing the therapy. Up to a certain point in the work this was primarily how the therapy could be described and how it was proceeding. I have used the term ‘better mother’ therapy to describe that common approach, which was well developed by Transactional Analysts at the time. The widely held view was, and in fact still is, that the main problem can be thought of as inadequate parenting, and that it can be solved by some form of re-parenting. Although seemingly simplistic and somewhat grandiose it remains a

very compelling and appealing phantasy, often fitting the client/ patient’s deepest wish, established in childhood, to find another and a better mother. It is a very comfortable role for a therapist. Many share

that wish for themselves, and by projecting the unmet early needs onto a patient they may fulfil their own desire vicariously. It also keeps the therapist in the comfortable and superior position of believing that they can/would have done a better job of looking after the child’s needs. The result is that it often keeps the patient stuck in the compliant, ‘sweet’ child role. The power of that phantasy is well illustrated by a common

slogan carried on T-shirts in California in the 1970s, saying: ‘It’s never too late to have a happy childhood’. Sadly it is. If you didn’t have a good experience as a child you can’t really recover those years and have the idealised childhood you missed. The task of therapy is, instead, to help you recover from the past failures and traumas in childhood, to understand the consequences for your adult life, and to ensure that you don’t carry it forward on to another generation – but to help you make the most of your adult life from now on. This section follows the sequence of the letters, from the re-parenting

style of therapy to the impact and her distress and resistance as I began to change direction. By shifting gear and becoming more available to be used as a representation of the cold, withdrawing failing mother, I provided Jane with the possibility of using me to represent that mother connecting her to the experience of feeling rejected and unacceptable to that mother. That negative transference began to escalate, following this change in the work, to the point where it was very difficult for both of us to trust that the therapy would not break down. Jane also felt, however, that the long period of good experience had allowed her to develop some trust in my care for her, my good intention and my competence as a therapist. I will discuss this further in Chapter 5. However, I did not start the work with that perspective. In the early

part of the work I was doing my best to provide the ‘better’ experience. I therefore begin here by focusing on some of those sequences, through Jane’s eyes and her letters. Starting in the ‘good mother’ phase a poignant description of the

little girl followed from a long letter in which Jane described her state of mind. (I wondered to myself whether there is such a thing as a frozen ego state, a state of mind that is developmentally stuck.) When Jane regressed, she came to feel herself to be that frozen

persona. Jane herself is very sure that the re-parenting which she felt herself to be getting at that stage in the therapy was what she

needed and made up for the deficits she experienced. The picture she gives us of her childhood shows how children can come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with them and they then find what they see as ‘evidence’ for their badness. In a letter from the early phase of the work she says of herself:

I did hate that frozen, odd secretive, lying stupid socially inept little girl. I had a glimpse of what it could have been for her – maybe she really can have an experience with you that makes a difference to her. She loves you so much, hangs on your every word. She loved being with you whilst you drew in her book … but is scared you will get angry with her that she is too scared to draw … It is as though she is there in the shadow but not ‘fully’ in me … I can tell I look normal, no-one can see.