I felt a funeral, in my brain: from sticky baby to recycling machine

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to describe how a three-year-old boy´s infantile trauma was actualized in the transference and recounts the work required to contain his primitive infantile states. The author explores the self-protective and communicative function of the child’s adhesive and omnipotent behaviour and the appearance of somatic reactions in the sessions. Somatic symptoms were linked to raw, abrupt, and hostile feelings in the child towards the analyst in the transference, followed by a sense of acute danger. Understanding and surviving a shared experience led to a dream and a dawning recognition and tolerance of separation in the child. His unintegrated infantile parts were gradually able to enter the playroom where they could be addressed in the transference. Being separate and unable to possess the analyst triggered intense ambivalence and physical attacks on the analyst and led to the emergence of a fatherly attitude in the analyst. Working through his oedipal ambivalence with the help of a third, an internal father, paved the way to symbolization, the creation of a ‘recycling machine’ and the depressive position. The author will discuss the somatic reactions linked to his infantile states, the dream and the symbolic meaning of the recycling machine.

KEYWORDS:

• Adhesive identification
• skin ego
• psychosomatics
• primitive infantile states
• countertransference

Acknowledgments

The author has received a grant from the Foundation Mentalthygientisk Rådgivningskontor.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Confidentiality

Due to the duty of confidentiality the clinical case is anonymized. In addition, informed consent has been given by the parents to use clinical material in this paper.

Notes

1. A physical illness or other condition caused or aggravated by a mental factor such as internal conflict or stress. It does not exclude the possible co-existence of other factors that contribute to the development of a particular illness (genetic, physical, environmental, etc.).

2. The issue as to whether psychosomatic illnesses are connected to a deficit, or a psychic conflict has been a longstanding difference in the approaches to psychosomatic illnesses between analysts from the Paris School of Psychosomatics and Kleinian writers (Bronstein, 2011)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Stiftelsen Mentalhygienisk Rådgivningskontor [40000kr].

Notes on contributors

Linda Johanne Rolfsen

Linda Johanne Rolfsen is a training analyst of the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society. She is also a child- and adolescent psychoanalyst.