Child/Adolescent Analysts at Work in the Present Space1

These two clinically-based panels, designed to throw more light on the problems of treating aggression and sexuality, were organized by Elizabeth Tuters (Canada) for the IPA (COCAP) and the Association for Child Psychoanalysis Inc. (ACP).

Nellie Vlietstra-Zock (Netherlands) was the first panelist. She presented riveting clinical material from her work with a late adolescent girl struggling with anxiety as to whether to live or die, which reflected unspoken family secrets. Carlos Barredo (Argentina) discussed this material framed by a modification of the phrase by Wittgenstein, ‘whereof one cannot speak…thereof one cannot stay silent’ (subtitle of History beyond Trauma [Davoine and Gaudillière, 2004]), who stated the cases presented therein had very similar features to the case presented by Vlietstra-Zock. Barredo commented that, in the brief space of a page of presented material, the narrative of the analyst places us in the center of the plot where the threads of multiple stories, past and present, intertwine. In these cases, managing the transference and the style of intervention constitutes a creative attempt by the analyst, yet this may indeed offer special difficulties for their analytic approach. In Barredo's opinion, acting out by way of repetition gives up glimpses of the past, not as archeological ruins, but as something new that, once extracted from the dead context, can become ‘a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger’ (according to the poetic formulation of Walter Benjamin). What surfaces only as action is the counterpart of what the analyst perceives as silenced, taboo, suppressed in the narrative of the analysand's daily life. The suicide theme that hovers in the therapy sessions creates ongoing anxiety for both analyst and analysand. Barredo points out that only her analyst can help her in the path of casting off the blissful silence that keeps her alienated in deadening identifications. Only running the risk of following