You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Publication of Therapeutic consultations in child psychiatry (Winnicott, 1971) was followed after two years by a German edition. Since then, not very much has been published about the experiences with the ‘squiggle technique’, a seemingly simple
method which has the quality of a razor's edge. Child analysts use it in different ways. However, in the hands of therapists who are not analytically trained, the technique may deteriorate into something like a test or just an aid for storytelling.
Michael Günter, an experienced analyst and child psychiatrist from Tübingen, Germany, has extensively used squiggles in Winnicott's sense as signs of mutual emotional movements of child and analyst in a potential space. Together they create—out of preconscious ‘material’ from both sides—a common shared ‘third’, a newly found meaning of what might happen in the therapeutic dyad—intersubjectivity of the finest quality.
In the Introduction, the author describes, with reference to Winnicott and others who have published in this field, his own understanding and use of this method in detailed form. He underlines how important an analytic training is for an optimal application and how much exposed and how little protected the analyst feels during this process. Constant reflecting activity and self-analysis are paradoxically combined with a need for spontaneity. In the Nachträglichkeit of the reflective function, it is therefore more important than in any other form of applied psychoanalytic methods to restore the analytic position. As soon as this is done, it is again lost in the construction of the next common figuring. Shared visual products show the way to words of dynamic intimacy.
In 12 first interviews with children aged 7-16 years, the usefulness of the squiggle method and diagnostic interpretations for the patient are clearly demonstrated, for example, for deblocking certain developmental movements, showing preconscious wishes without a loss of protection, building trust, getting