Case IX. ‘Ashton’ aet 12 Years

The next case that I wish to present provides an example of a therapeutic consultation which carried itself forward by its own momentum, and the boy and I reached surprising places. There was a significant result to this consultation in that the boy, who had become more and more blocked in his emotional development and was developing into a schizoid personality, was able to go forward in his development. Both at home and at school he could now be helped.

In this case, a great deal depended on the result of the therapeutic consultation. Had this not been effectual, then, it would have been necessary for the boy to have been moved from his school and his good home environment and for him to be in someone else's care, living near a psychotherapist. The burden of the case would then have been a very heavy one to be borne by the psychiatrist or a team and special school, and of course paid for by the parents who would not have been able to understand what they were paying for. In fact the boy used the consultation in a productive way and became changed in that he now was able to make use of help that was actually available. The parents were easily able to pay for the work done by me and they were encouraged and indeed delighted to find themselves in the new position of being able themselves to offer effective help to their son and to gain the co-operation of the school.

If an attempt were made to give a psychiatric label to this case one would have to think in terms of incipient schizophrenia, but there is a limit to the value of labelling cases in child psychiatry and especially labelling children in the stages just before puberty and in early adolescence. The schizoid quality of the case rather rapidly disappeared from the clinical picture in the new phase that followed the work that the boy and I did together. This work as usual consisted in little more than communication, communication at all levels including a very deep level, communication made possible by the gradua