From Acting to Communicating: The Analysis of a Boy With a Pathological Organization1

The author presents the analysis of an 8 year-old boy prematurely born after a high-risk pregnancy, then hospitalized for two weeks. He was never breastfed and presented vomiting, intense activity and inadequate behaviour as symptoms. His highly dysfunctional family is composed of a non-productive father and a homely, though aggressive, mother. The patient displayed a rigid defensive structure with perverse aspects and a cruel superego. His constant interest in magical characters frequently disguises an avoidance of reality. By means of transference interpretations, a trustworthy link with the analyst now allows him his own mental space, where hidden psychotic states come to light. In the clinical material, this boy's skills for insight mingle with oscillations from severely defensive states to integration and vice versa. The analytic relationship in this often hostile scenario has become strong. The analysis is hampered by constant demands from family and school—both expect the analyst to prevent his frequent acting out. Whereas some perverse polymorphism is part of childhood and may persist throughout life, it is likely that the patient's pathological organization may yield to reality and facilitate reparation, relinquishing the world of make-believe as well as the intense projective mental functioning.