A Clinical Note on the Therapeutic Use of a Quasi-Religious Experience1

Many phases of the psychotherapeutic process with a child patient were characterized by her intensive preoccupation with religious experience. As used during therapy, these could only be understood as a protective distance device against the developing transference. As treatment unfolded, it became apparent that the distance device itself was one important aspect of her transference which called for special psychotherapeutic intervention, as will become evident in the course of this presentation.

Elaine was brought to us at Southard School, at the age of thirteen, against her will, and under the well-sustained pretense of her frightened and guilt-ridden mother that they were making the 2, 000-mile trip solely for summer pleasure. The mother lacked the father's support in her plan to institutionalize the child. Yet, she told us, despairingly, that she would even disrupt her marriage if necessary, in order to help her only child, whose fantasy life was encroaching so markedly upon her reality hold.

A highly gifted, articulate and sophisticated youngster, Elaine was married to Robin Hood in her fantasy. While she soberly maintained that she could adequately distinguish her fantasy world from reality, she nevertheless increasingly restricted her life in order to please the phantom husband. This proud fantasy hero, who fought fearlessly for the needy, was very much the opposite of the cold, hyperintellectual father who withdrew from the marital