A Year's Analysis of a Five-Year-Old Girl

In this paper I would like to describe an analytic intervention that was undertaken in the hope that treatment could mitigate or prevent what looked like the beginning of disturbed character development in a four-and-a-half year old.

Caroline's mother, Mrs T., was referred by a local well-baby clinic. She had attended the clinic since Caroline was eighteen months, and a year ago she asked for help with her daughter. She experienced Caroline as battling, provocative, demanding and stubborn, and felt her to be unhappy. As reports from the clinic showed, it had gradually became clear that Mrs T. herself had great difficulties in relating and responding appropriately to her daughter. Her own severe personality problems and difficulties with her ambivalence caused her to be over-critical of Caroline and to demand age-inappropriately grown-up behaviour from her. Generally, she seemed only able to accept and affirm Caroline's feelings, thoughts and behaviour if they conformed to her ideas of what Caroline should feel, think and do.

Thus, one of the main issues at the diagnostic stage was to decide whether what the mother regarded as difficult behaviour was primarily indicative of problems within Caroline or a quite healthy response to very difficult circumstances. The overall feeling was that it was appropriate, for it was as if Caroline had to fight for the right to develop her own personality, fight for the right to be a child, and demand the affirmation that so often was not forthcoming. Thus far, Caroline's difficult behaviour was largely confined to her relationship to her mother, though there had also been complaints from some of the neighbours. Danger, however, was seen in the possibility that Caroline would internalize a battling mode of relating, especially as this was one of the mother's main modes. Danger was also seen in other areas. Miss Freud felt it was likely that Caroline would develop a defensively hardened personality with a strict superego which would be