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Some years ago one of the first of my child analysands returned to me at the age of sixteen and told me that she felt she needed help once again. Dorothy had been in analysis between the ages of seven and ten. She was, in fact, one of the children whose case material was used to illustrate my earlier paper on transference in child analysis (1951). The treatment of Dorothy in adolescence gave me an extraordinary opportunity to re-examine the role of transference in child analysis and to reconsider my earlier views.
Dorothy had been an aggressive, insatiable, and uncontrollable child when she entered analysis. Learning was impaired. She chose for her friends the neglected, quasi-delinquent children in her neighborhood, and, at the age of seven, seemed ready to form her own identity on the basis of "no good," "worthless," "cast off."
For the purposes of this essay there is no need to elaborate on the case history or on those details of the analysis which are summarized in the earlier paper. The analysis brought about radical changes in the child's personality, the oedipal conflicts were brought to a favorable resolution, anxieties over sex play and masturbation were extensively dealt with, and at the time of termination Dorothy showed all the signs of a favorable development in her femininity, her pleasure in learning, her relationships to parents and friends, and her self-valuation.
In this sketch I should call attention to one symptom that had