The Hitchcok boy: treating aggressive acting out in child therapy

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"P, a seven-year-old boy, derived significant benefit from a three year psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This clinical case, illustrate communication barriers that develop and establish themselves in the context of psychosis. Throughout the analytical process, the psychotherapist was consistently faced with a relational paradox: she had before her a child exhibiting chaotic psychic functioning, always on the verge of disintegration, and further characterised by a strong desertification of ludic expression. In considering the psychoanalytic trajectory, the current article examines the manifest relational communication aiming at a permanent attack on the therapeutic attachment, therefore intensifying the analyst’s creative suspense."