Intensive collaborative treatment of parents and children (5), (6) has been used to study symptom choice and fixation. The child is found to be held to a particular point of fixation or type of symptomatology for at least two reasons: 1, fears of something from which it regressed or which arrested its development, and 2, the parental sanction granting to the child instinctual gratification at the level which becomes the point of fixation or symptom choice. By this sanction the parent achieves a vicarious, guilty satisfaction of his own instinctual needs. The child is guilty if it affords, or if it denies, this gratification to the parent. Successful therapy of the child often makes therapy imperative for the parent who is deprived of the vicarious gratification.