A Child is Being Murdered: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Treatment of a Compulsion to Child Pornography

I will describe the treatment of a man who was afflicted with a compulsion to child pornography. I will outline the course of the treatment from the initial manifestations of early nonsy mbolized trauma in the register of enactment to the growth of understanding, reflection, and healing. Leaning on Sheldon Bach's work, in particular, his article, “A Dream of the Maquis de Sade,” I will describe how the patient was compelled to perverse attempts to repeat in an attempt to mourn the devastations and confusions of his early years and the erasure and murder of his self. The treatment hinged on the patient's recognition that the scenarios of child pornography manifested the destruction of himself and the double identifications with both the child victims, manipulated into a perverse reversal involving pleasure in violation and pain, and with the manic omnipotence of the perpetrators. The treatment promoted the restitution and recovery of his self and his going-on-being in time and space and above all, his humanity. I will argue that a psychoanalytic treatment offers the only true help for these men who are predominantly coerced into regulatory, punitive, and purely behavioral treatments that often repeat their original and damaging traumas.