Motivational and Structural Developments and the Emergence of Selfhood in the Analysis of a Latency Child

THE CENTRAL DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OVER the last two decades has revolved around the experience of selfhood, its development, its structural aspects, and its quality as a motivational system in the personality. The theoretical status of the self as a concept has known very complex vicissitudes, and its integration in the drive theory and the structural viewpoint of the psychoanalytic metapsychology has been rife with hardship and controversies. Although the storm of the 1970s which almost caused a rupture in the psychoanalytic movement (Kohut, 1971), (1977), (1984); (Goldberg, 1978); (Ornstein, 1981) has abated over the past few years and the attempt at fruitful integration is showing its first results (Wallerstein, 1981), (1983), (1985); (Eagle, 1984); (Goldberg, 1985); (Wolf, 1985), there is still a long way to go for the complete assimilation of these new developments.

Reviewing the psychoanalytic literature dealing with that integration, one is struck by the almost total absence of theoretical contributions arising from clinical psychoanalysis of children. To my mind, this is even more surprising when we consider that the psychoanalytic encounter with a child, who is in the midst of