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This paper continues our examination of parent work in the context of child, adolescent, and adult analysis (K. K. Novick and J. Novick 2002). Moving forward from focus on evaluation, recommendation, setting the frame, and beginning the treatment, here we look at the work of the middle and pretermination phases. As in our earlier discussions, an underlying assumption is that treatment goals include parent development and restoration of the parent-child relationship.
In the last paper we described the case of Mark, a suicidal adolescent who, after a difficult beginning phase, developed an interest in the workings of his own mind and began to enjoy hopes and plans, all markers of entry for the individual patient into the middle phase of treatment. As he began to reject parental externalizations and become his own person, his parents were unable to tolerate his growing psychological autonomy and literally kidnapped him from treatment. Mark's case highlights the danger of a unilateral, premature termination at the beginning of the middle phase. As many do, his parents thought they could prevent psychological separation by controlling physical proximity. Parents may push for premature termination when there is symptomatic improvement, and avoid making the transition to supporting the child's growing autonomy.
Child analysts, who tend to identify with the child, may get very angry with parents at this point, feeling that the parents are sabotaging the child's efforts to use the treatment to grow up. It is crucial for the analyst to be able to empathize with parents' fear and sadness in their belief that any separation, physical or psychological, means losing their child. Here the prior work during the evaluation and recommendation bears fruit in our being