An Experiment in a Therapeutically Limited Relationship with a Seven Year Old Girl

Introduction

The title of this paper is not as clear as I should like it to be but it does describe with some accuracy exactly what I wish to present. My contacts with Helen P. which took place under the auspices of a child guidance clinic are in no sense a child analysis as Melanie Klein or Anna Freud would define it. Throughout the sixteen visits which she made to the clinic twice a week for eight weeks, no attempt was made to unearth or analyze unconscious content or to give to the child anything in the nature of Freudian interpretation. The relationship between us was taken simply and immediately for itself and developed according to what the child found in it and did to it of her own will both positively and negatively, under the pressure of the deprivations and frustrations imposed by the time limits, the reality situation, and the lack of projection on my part. The interviews, or rather the contacts, for there was much more action than verbalization, were carried through, as far as I was humanly able, in terms of the child as she actually was at the moment, and my recognition of her immediate will, feeling or meaning. Everything centered in her, was oriented with regard to her, which does not mean for a moment that there were no checks but that even when my response was a prohibition, it was also a seeing of her, never a denial of the nature of her impulse or her right to have it. Where my own curiosity as to her behavior symptoms or my interest in bringing out certain