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Certain cases are described which are being handled for corrective object relations at the Child Development Center, New York. The pathology resembles schizophrenia but with reservations. The defeat in object relations which made these children inaccessible to standard therapeutic treatment was assumed to be related to the trauma of maternal deprivation. A therapeutic relationship with a particular worker was planned for each child which would allow of regression to a stage of need satisfaction and gratification. The aim was to test the child's capacity for growth in object relations beyond need satisfaction as well as test the extent of reversibility of pathology.
Continued need satisfaction by the special teacher may induce further regression to the point of traumatic fixation. Repeated gratification if necessary of oral, anal, urethral, motor, perceptual, and affective needs with verbal accompaniment serves to reinforce the gratification, to relate it to earlier intolerable deprivation, and to give it more specific meaning and cathexis. This regression serves to expose earlier developmental distortions and etiological connexions and helps to localize pathology.
The special teacher uses the child's verbalization and play as cues for reconstructing, reality testing, structuring, and integration of reality. The regressive phase promotes a corrective relationship with the special teacher, and the neutralization of drive energies which are then mobilized for a higher level of integration and functioning. At a later stage the teacher also follows the child's progressive clues and supports the ego in all such strivings, within the limits of the child's ego strength. She also clarifies incompatible strivings, thus aiding in the synthetic function of the ego. This type of handling lasts on the average seven to nine months, the children having been seen by the teacher five times weekly for an hour at a time and in a special room. There has been no experience with