title: On becoming a child: Reverie in the psychotherapy of children.
abstract: My aim in this paper is to examine the role of reverie in facilitating the development of the child-subject, that is, the child's continuous motion towards subjectivity. I begin by briefly reviewing the concept of reverie and proceed with an examination of elements I believe are fundamental and common to both reverie and child psychotherapy, that is, primary thought processes and primitive impulses. I then describe and demonstrate the atmosphere created by these elements using three examples from the psychotherapy of 8 year-old Jonathan. Next, I discuss an intersubjective parallel of Bion's reverie and a developmentally oriented version of Ogden's reverie, focusing on its relation to processes of destruction and recognition. I argue that reverie provides the recognition of the child's struggle for his own birth and growth as a subject, that is, of his child-subject. Finally, I refer to the presence of reverie from the primary preoccupation of mother and father till the child's reverie of himself, his day-dreaming.
authors.affiliation: Mental Health Clinic for the Child, Adolescent and Family, Ehad Haam, Haifa.
authors.forename: Nir
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9684-7104
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hermon
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005201:Fantasy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D013850:Thinking; D014705:Verbal Behavior
keywords: child; intersubjectivity; reverie