The Significance of Pets for Children—Illustrated by a Latency-Age Girl's Use of Pets in her Analysis

INTEREST IN ANIMALS IS UBIQUITOUS IN CHILDHOOD. CHILDREN are drawn to or frightened by animals. Almost all children, at one time or another, wish to have a pet of some kind, with variability in the choice being quite remarkable. It is surprising, then, that there is so little psychoanalytic literature that has had as its focus the significance of pets. Undoubtedly, valuable insights exist and are probably embedded in the clinical case literature (e.g., Kupfermann, 1977). The symbolic significance of animals in the development of phobic and obsessional psychopathology is illuminated convincingly in Freud's classic case studies of Little Hans (1909a), the Rat Man (1909b), and the Wolf Man (1918). In none of these cases, however, was the significant animal a pet. I have had the opportunity in child analytic work with a latency-age girl to observe directly the many psychological meanings that pets had for this child.

In most child patients, animals are drawn into their psychopathology as the object of a phobia. In contrast, Laura's use of pets took on a philic direction. I do not mean to designate