Case XIV. ‘Cecil’ aet 21 Months at First Consultation

These case notes concern a boy, a characteristic of whose emotional development was a capacity to regress to dependence in his home setting. The parents met these regressions adequately, and in this way turned them into positive therapeutic experiences.

The case has special interest in that the process links very closely with the regressive episodes that characterise the life of any child in a reliable home setting, that is, apart from the question of psychiatric illness either in the child or in the family.

The management of this case was based on six consultation hours spaced as follows:

Cecil was referred to me by the teacher at his nursery school in a district outside London.

I first interviewed the father, who was genuinely concerned about his child and had a good grip on the total situation. In an hour's interview he told me the details of Cecil's life.

Family

There were two children of the marriage, Cecil, 21 months, and Kenneth, 1 month, who was at that time being breast fed. The father described the mother as ‘intelligent but not always easy’. Cecil was born normally (7 lb.) and had been breast-fed for eight months. He was eager and had been fed ‘on demand’. He had been in fact rather greedy, and

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would tend to wake after one hour, so that from 6 weeks old he was not a good sleeper. For this he was taken to a hospital clinic and given chloral. On the whole he was happy as a baby and started early to play. He became easy to manage, and weaning at 8 months presented no difficulty.

The father said that his wife had been more competent with Kenneth who did very well from the start than she had been with Cecil, implying that there was real difficulty with Cecil in the early weeks. At 10 months Cecil was piling bricks one on top of another. He sat and walked in good