Discussion of Dr. Padouvas' Case

At the start of his unfortunately brief analysis, D was 16 years old. A year before he was born, a 6-month-old sister had died in a car accident with his father driving. When he was 2 years old, D's mother developed a rapidly advancing case of multiple sclerosis and died when he was 3 1/2 years old. He was taken care of by his paternal grandparents, while his maternal grandparents, who themselves were adoptive parents, seemed to lose interest in him. A year later, at 4 1/2, D's father married his nursery school teacher. The little boy would not accept his second mother and would not call her “mother” until he was forced to do so by his father. The emotional characteristics of his father and his second mother are not very clear. His father seems to have been a somewhat passive man, who denied his feelings and conflicts, and was not verbally forthcoming. He may have been dominated by his second wife. D's second mother seems to have been seriously injured by D's rejection of her, and seems to have been quite critical of him and provoked by him. D experienced both parents as working in concert, distant, disappointed in him, and punishing. In the analysis he tended to speak of them as one person, rather than as two distinct individuals. From 7 to 14 years, he was treated intermittently in psychotherapy by an experienced child analyst with only modest results. The reasons for the limits on the amount and intensity of that treatment are not known. His mother reported that the referring analyst had said that he and his parents had difficulty separating from each other. D was almost certainly in prolonged mourning for his first mother, and was said to feel guilty about her death. At 10 years a brother was born, who D felt diverted his father's attention from him and who he felt was favored by his second mother. Indeed, his stepmother voiced strong reluctance to spend money on D's analysis because there would be insufficient funds available for her own son; we do not know how