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Bion equates the need for awareness of emotional experiences with truth and the lack of such awareness with deprivation of truth. ‘The effect on the personality of such deprivation is analogous to the effect of physical starvation on the physique’ (Bion, 1962).
This paper is about one 9-year-old boy's struggle to think and to understand the truth of his life in the midst of a prolonged legal dispute. He had been living with the same foster parents for five years and was already in twice weekly psychotherapy when his birth mother applied to the court for a revocation of the care order. Although this proceeding took place prior to the implementation of the Children Act 1989, it highlights some of the problems faced when a birth parent or parents apply to the court for access or custody of a child who has been in the care of the local authority for an extended period.
The Children Act places the best interests of the child as paramount but also emphasizes the responsibility of parents towards children and the need for local authorities to work in partnership with parents. The problem of maintaining stability for a child whose future is not secured by adoption and of facilitating meaningful contact with birth parents often involves a difficult balance. For Jamie, the length of the legal proceedings, the uncertainty of the situation and the increased access to his birth mother exposed him to what I have called a second dose of the original trauma of his early experiences. Seeing Jamie regularly during