From Boxes and Toys; our Child Analysis Instruments for 2000

Abstract

This paper is the result of the discussions that took place in the Children’s Laboratory of the Asociación Psicoanalítica del Uruguay. The group worked through the texts that were registered in the minute book and re-elaborated them. The initial concern, shared by many of us, had to do with the fact –drew from our experience with children– that many patients were actually indifferent or showed a lack of interest towards the box we offer them containing toys and other objects to play with. This applied mostly to latents. We have done a brief historical revision of the origin of the box and the toys we included in it. We asked ourselves about its meaning and whether or not it is still in force today; its vicissitudes in the analytic process as well as its final destiny once the treatment has ended or it has been interrupted. This path has confronted us with a mourning process for the loss of the old and reassuring conception of the box and it led us to propose its desirable diversity in relation to the interests and dispositions of today’s children and today’s analysts.