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Working with children and young people has been an uphill road. Analysts complain that it requires too much energy, that it is “not the real thing,” and, unfortunately, not much has been written on child analysis since the seminal contributions of the Kleinian school and Anna Freud.
Antonino Ferro presents us a real gift: a demonstration of his rare clinical skills, his detailed observation of the emotional encounter between patient and analyst, and a thorough understanding of the interplay between transference and countertransference. Since the time of Melanie Klein and Arminda Aberastury (whom I had the privilege to know well in Argentina), I haven't come across such a detailed description of the emotional experience of work with children and young people, with an eye to both analyst and patient.
Ferro's book has eight chapters and a very useful introduction by Elizabeth Bott Spillius, who, because Ferro assumes the reader's familiarity with the writings of Klein and Bion, explains Klein's concepts of positions and their fluctuations and Bion's elaboration of projective identification. She presents these as part of the mode of communication between patient and analyst, as they are originally between mother and infant. In her introduction, Spillius discusses some of Ferro's differences with the British Kleinian school and her own views regarding these differences.