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The republication of this book in paperback form is welcome. It was first published in French in 1960, and then in Great Britain by the Hogarth Press in 1969. In this new edition, the preface by Winnicott has been retained, and there is the addition of a new postscript by Joyce McDougall.
The book consists of the full and detailed account of the analysis in 1954/55 of Sammy, a nine-year-old psychotic American boy, who was living in Paris with his parents and younger sister, where Joyce McDougall also was at that time. Sammy was seen five times a week by Joyce McDougall, with Serge Lebovici acting in a supervisory capacity. The accurate reporting of what took place during the sessions was made possible partly by the fact that initially Sammy insisted that his dictation of fantastic stories was written down by his analyst; but it has to be added that her responses and thinking about the sessions was also carefully recorded. Having controlled his anxiety and his analyst in this way for some time, his interest in his stories faded, and was replaced, as he complained of ‘boredom’, by a period of manic and difficult to manage behaviour; one can only feel empathy and admiration for Joyce McDougall's sensitive and thoughtful approach in handling this. She decides, at this point, to provide some toys and dolls for him (today, it seems surprising that these were not provided sooner, but one has to remember that this work was taking place thirty-five years ago, and, as revealed in the new postscript, Joyce McDougall had been forced at that time to leave her child analytic training at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic, now the Anna Freud Centre, and Sammy was her first child analytic patient). Sammy played avidly with the new toys, and the ‘dialogue’ developed, with a gradual reduction in his insistence that his analyst spend his sessions writing, and a delight in her ‘thoughts’ about his ‘troubles’, many of which were attached to his body and hers. After only four months in tr