Disguised hysteria in a child psychosis?
In this paper the stages are presented in the psychoanalysis of an eight-and-a-half-year-old boy consulting with a worsening symptomatology that has been evolving for more than one year. The trigger element seems to have been the birth of a brother. During the analysis the relation was clear between this brother's birth, the mother's abortions, and the previous death of a brother. The interpretation of the homicidal omnipotent fantasies and the analyst's reception of projective identifications, destructive anxieties, and castrating anxieties of the patient produced, apparently, an unimagined fast improvement of the psychotic symptoms. This took the authors retrospectively to raise the hypothesis that this patient's psychosis could be a disguised child hysteria.
Pualuan de Gomberoff
L
L
Institute of Psychoanalysis, Chilean Psychoanalytic Association, Santiago, Chile.
Gomberoff
M
M
D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D005619:Freudian Theory; D006801:Humans; D007046:Hysteria / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D012043:Regression, Psychology