Chapter 5: Physical Trauma and Actual Seduction

In this chapter we will present the analysis of a 6 ¹/₂-year-old boy who was the victim of two major traumas. At 4 ¹/₂ he was seduced into mutual fellatio by a teenage cousin; at 5 ¹/₂, while playing with fire, he was seriously burned. He required several hospitalizations for skin grafts, and he remained disfigured with visible scars on his face and hands. Thus his traumata included sexual seduction, pain, hospitalization with anesthesia, surgery and other procedures, and disfigurement.

Analytic work with a young child provides an opportunity to reconstruct how dramatic external events interact with inner fantasies and later experiences, and how this interaction influences the child's development. We can study how the child integrates the trauma in terms of the developmental phase in which it occurred, and with the immature thought processes, fantasies, and wishes of that phase. We can also learn how the external trauma mobilizes painful affects associated to the accompanying fantasies, leading in