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The author selects from her detailed records material evidencing transference for the purpose of demonstrating that 'play … shows in an immediate and spontaneous way the positive and negative feelings of the child', and that such play should always be interpreted. 'If the child's behavior in the first session and the most urgent material it presents in that session are interpreted to it in a manner that takes into account the whole situation and not merely the symbolism of the play, transference is established' (pp. 266-267). Everyone develops in infancy certain characteristics and certain ways of approaching love and hate which are repeated in later life. The child has intense libidinal expectations, and an intense, repetitive need for its libidinal object; it therefore suffers more intensely from anxiety. This fact makes easy the access to its mechanisms of personalization and symbolization. The situations relieved in its acting out derive from preverbal events and material belonging to a time prior to conscious remembering. Two clinical descriptions illustrate the author's point of view.
Martha, a girl of six, suffered from anorexia, enuresis, and severe speech difficulties (her only words were 'papa, mama, atá'), and tended to fall and to be easily hurt. She was seen four times weekly for two-and-one-half years; she remains improved six months after termination of treatment. A two-and-one-half-year-old boy who suffered from anorexia, night terrors, urinary and fecal incontinence,