The Interminable Struggle to Undo a Basic Fault in an Adolescent Boy's Analysis

I first reported on Peter's analysis just over three years ago.1 He had then been in treatment with me for three years, having started soon after his eleventh birthday. At that time he attended a small tutorial school and a couple of years later he went on from there to a private school. Since September 1980 he has been going to a polytechnic college. It was only then that his sessions were reduced from five to three a week. Not at his request: his preference would have been to continue as before. This may at first sound surprising in a boy who has been able to make only limited use of the opportunities which analytic treatment offered him. But coming to the Clinic has become something of a haven for him, a place of relative peace and security in the midst of a world which he views with suspicion, where he feels rather uncomfortable and ill-at-ease for much of the time, where he has to struggle so hard to stand his own ground and where he feels he can trust nobody.

Peter's pathology lies beyond the neurotic; yet it is neither psychotic nor borderline. If he fits into any category, the unsatisfactory designation of ‘atypical’ would be the most suitable. The central overt features of his pathology are his extreme passivity and the total lack of a basic trust in human beings, including himself. I am the only person in his life towards whom Peter has been able to develop some sort of trust. But it is far from unconditional or continuous and has evolved painfully slowly over the years, nurtured by my reliability, consistency and his growing belief in the genuineness of my concern for him and his future. I have certainly been the only good-enough object in his life until recently when there have been indications that he is also developing some measure of trust in his female tutor at college. I have been greatly relieved about this, especially in view of the fact that his tutor is a woman. To be able to trust a woman is quite an extraordinary achievement for Peter as you wi