Editorial

Catalina Bronstein’s article discusses the symbolic function of physical symptoms, in this case, eczema and asthma, and the meaning of their appearance in the transference. This moving article explores the connection between the development of severe eczema and asthma in an eight-year-old girl and her problems experiencing mental pain and conflict. She examines the transference around the child’s psychosomatic reaction in therapy sessions. Bronstein’s detailed attention to this girl leads her to suggest that this case may explain why some patients, despite experiencing intense physical sensations, can seem flat and emotionally ‘hollow’. She thinks that these children have a sense of emptiness as a result of the need for very early dissociation because of fear of annihilation, fear that is experienced in the body. Based on her observations in this case, Bronstein believes that a sudden psychosomatic symptom in a session may be the result of intense hostility towards the object. However, this arouses terror, as the hated object is also the loved object and essential for the child’s survival. She thinks that the therapist may unwittingly help trigger such an episode by not containing the child’s projections leading to the patient feeling she has to take back raw ‘psycho-physical’ emotions. This article discusses the different degrees – and forms – of symbolic functioning in connection to this girl’s experience of her eczema and asthma and their manifestation in the transference relationship to the therapist.

The complexity of clinical work with children who display challenging and violent behaviour is the subject of the next article by Peter Slater. Drawing on his doctoral research study, based on three-times-weekly psychotherapy with a boy who had witnessed domestic violence, the author vividly conveys the many challenges of understanding and working clinically with such a child. Slater describes how his research design, which was based on grounded theory and rooted in