Extraverbal communication in the analysis of a 9-year-old boy

Abstract

The starting point of this work is the special link established by a nine-yearold boy with his analyst in the analytic situation. First the behavior of this child is described. It was characterized on the one hand by isolation and hermetism (the boy would not talk or play, he was like an inaccessible fortress), and, on the other hand, by the establishment of a dissociate communication, a sort of secret corridor where, like a ventriloquist, the boy conveyed messages that seemed to come from someone else.
Then the most striking aspects of the analytic process developing through a period of two years are reviewed, in order to find out why this patient established such a peculiar relationship with his internal objects. The peculiarity of this relationship was, staged, so to say, with the object-analyst. The following conclusions are made: the boy’s behavior corresponded to a very
strong experience of omnipotence; this omnipotence derived from identification of a part of the ego with an idealized object (the idealized breast, massively introjected); he felt the maintenance of this maniac union to be a vital necessity, lest he be annihilated by another nucleus of the super-ego, terribly persecutory.