“My Brakes Are Broken”: Case Presentation of a Latency-Age Boy Struggling with Affect Regulation

Parental pathology and environmental stress impacts children

and can derail the developmental achievement of affect regulation, an essential ego function that has its genesis in the early relationship between the infant and his caregiver. When parents are unable to provide consistent empathic care, articulate emotions, label feelings, and put words to experiences and behaviors, it leaves a child unable to understand his internal and external world. This clinical article demonstrates the link between the function of verbalization and the development of affect regulation in a latency boy growing up in a family suffering from multiple problems. Using the clinical material from the initial and middle phases of his analysis, the process of expanding his ego capacity for affect regulation is discussed as well as the therapeutic techniques that facilitated change.