Envy and Despair in the Life of a Three-Year-Old

The degree of narcissistic hurt experienced by the first-born child when another one is born can often be underestimated by parents and clinicians alike. One such first-born child provided in her treatment a vivid documentation of the feelings and conflicts aroused in her by this common experience. Laura, the daughter of an intelligent and educated young couple, was 18 months old when a second, unplanned child was born. This child, too, was a girl. Although many children are displaced at a similar age, they do not necessarily respond with or perpetuate the intensely murderous feelings that were characteristic of Laura. The envy and despair which beset her by the time the baby was three months old ultimately drove her parents to refer her for treatment. She began analysis when she was not quite three years old.

Although it was Laura and her distress about the younger child, Karen, that brought Mr and Mrs S. to the Clinic for help, they were also concerned because she was not sleeping well and was coming into their bedroom at night, she could not get on with other children, and she had become an unhappy, nervous and irritable little girl. Furthermore, it emerged during the diagnostic procedure that, not surprisingly, the parents, too, were distressed and their personal difficulties complicated and interfered with Laura's development. We felt that Laura's vulnerability due to her age and the intensity of her misery required us to take her into treatment immediately. We could, of course, have urged her parents to get treatment for themselves; they indicated their readiness for it. But any benefit Laura might derive from the psychotherapy of her parents would, of necessity, have been delayed, depending on the use they would have made of their own treatments. It was thus arranged that I would see Laura five times a week; her parents, either one or both of them, every week and later one of them every other week. Father as well as Mother attended these interviews with faith