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MAURICE SENDAK'S WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE IS ONE OF MY favorite picture books. I love to think about the interplay of word and image in the book. Clearly, like so many of us, I marvel at Sendak's intuitive understanding of a young child's fantasy life and developmental issues. I actually have a poster of the wild rumpus section of the book in the room I use for play therapy.
I first came to know about Sendak's book when learning Rorschach's inkblot test. My New York University professor Larry Balter read the book to us in dramatic fashion as a way of explaining dreams. He reminded me of my first grade Greek teacher, Kyria Philipa, telling us stories from Homer's
This article is an invited paper presented at the conference Where the Wild Things Are Now: Exciting and Scary Things for Children and Therapists, co-sponsored by the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy and Section II, Childhood and Adolescence, Division of Psychoanalysis (39), American Psychological Association, New York City, December 1, 2007. I have decided to edit the original presentation very little with the aim of maintaining the actual spoken words and the implicit affective tones. The conference generated a certain pulse and excitement that went beyond the usual distance of speakers and audience. I also believe that given the nature of my own personal expressiveness the audience was able to better grasp and evaluate my clinical sensibilities because it in fact experienced me in a fuller way. I may go as far as to state that when presenting a case one communicates much more than when writing a case. In any event, my use of “self” is much more apparent live than it is on paper. This is not to say that written case reports are not of great value, only that the spoken word has its own unique indissoluble rhythm.
Odyssey. As child, I was a very enthusiastic listener but often frightened by the beasts and the angry gods that threatened the beleaguered, shipwrecked king o