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The author, based on his experience of intensive psychoanalysis with children suffering from early developmental catastrophes, examines narcissistic intrusive identifications and their related unconscious phantasies, anxieties and defenses. The paper describes two central unconscious phantasies: that of Pipe Children, who experience themselves as open-ended, hollow pipes, helplessly subjected to infiltrations and invasions by the object's psychic toxic material; and Cork Children, who feel compelled to stuff and block what they perceive as the object's holes or internal voids, in order to keep the container functioning and themselves alive. Some varieties of internal scripts within the child are described, particularly those of children experiencing either the impenetrable object's invasive projections of psychic materials, or a more primitive osmotic/diffuse identification, in which there is no clear differentiation or localization between leaking-in and spilling-out psychic materials in self and object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I describe the psychoanalysis of a girl on the Autisto-Psychotic Spectrum and her struggle to emerge out of a severe autistic pathological organisation. At the beginning of her analysis, the girl was in a state of autistic confusion, which was manifested as a sensorial lack of colour differentiation. Following interpretative working-through of her deep anxieties-of-being, she established a sensorial-emotional 'wall', leading to a consolidation of a previously precarious primary splitting. This, in turn, led to a better capacity for emotional perception and differentiation. Further interpretation of her paranoid-schizoid anxieties enabled a gradual emergence of relatedness, communication, concern, and some integration and reparation. Moreover, as the girl's linking functions, psychic space, object relations and integration improved, her sensory, perceptual and motor skills and integrative capacities improved as well. She eventually emerged into the emotional and sensorial 'land of colours'. Thus, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with its linking and mantling functions, proved to be indispensable for both her development, as well as for structural changes in her sensory-perceptual experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion examines some unconscious characteristics of children who choose to retreat, when facing social violence, abuse, illnesses and early developmental impairments, into a near-death defensive organization. This "near-death retreat" is governed by an omnipotent "death-object" with whom a pact is made, in unconscious phantasy, so as to avoid the pain of an unbearable internal and external reality at the price of mental paralysis. Children who opt for this special retreat are very often hyper-sensitive, hyper-permeable and hyper-vulnerable. As such, they are prone to flooding by archaic anxieties-of-being often found in autistic conditions, and to an internal sense of nowhere-ness. They are "pipe children" into whom the un-mentalized anxieties of their care-givers infiltrate in an osmotic, incontrollable way. Their internal objects are often confusing, comprising of a bewildering mixture of perpetrator and victim, impervious and dangerous. Clinical material taken from a psychoanalytic treatment of a refugee girl will demonstrate these characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of psychoanalysis, some children who are initially diagnosed as suffering from Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) turn out to move back and forth along an autisto-psychotic spectrum. This subgroup, or spectrum, is characterized by a mixture of paranoid-schizoid anxieties and less differentiated autistic anxieties-of-being. Thus, these children could be described as borderline autistic. The interpretation of unconscious anxiety proves to be a crucial factor in the analyses of these children. They are characterized by an overwhelming influx of intermingled anxieties. Thus, it is the analyst's difficult task to try and trace the dominant, urgent anxiety and interpret it in its own "language." It is helpful to interpret and show the child how autistic withdrawal serves against further fragmentation, and the way fragmentation prevents an influx of paralysing anxieties-of-being. Furthermore, different anxiety states require different technical considerations and means. This is especially so when the type of anxiety is related to disintegrated or unintegrated states of the body. Clinical material taken from a five-sessions-per-week analysis of a boy, initially diagnosed as ASD and later on as suffering from childhood schizophrenia, will attempt to demonstrate the internal dynamics and the technical challenges involved when working with the autisto-psychotic spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of a sense of home in early infancy is a complex achievement. It is intertwined throughout life with the child’s pursuit of a safe physio-mental coverage. This process will be described as an interaction between: (a) a safe dwelling in the body-as-mother (constitution); (b) the internalisation of the mother-as-me (internal object space) and (c) establishing Oedipal triangular space which is responsible for the capacity to move between narcissism-as-a-home and the world-as-a-home. The construction of a home as an interplay between these elements is accompanied by distinct anxieties and unconscious phantasies. Disruptions in this early process, due to deficit, internal object relations or environmental factors, might lead to severe pathologies, mindlessness, hatred, violence and murderousness. A distinction will be made between these mental states of being-at-home, homelessness and nowhere-ness based on the corresponding levels of early development and typical anxieties. Home and homelessness are seen as more developed states of object relating accompanied by some capacity for feelings of loss, mourning and longing. Nowhere-ness, however, stems from early states of anxieties-of-being which are characterised by confusion between self and object, by nameless grief, nameless dread and devastation. The varieties of home, homelessness and nowhere-ness will be discussed with the help of clinical material taken from an analysis of a refugee child on the autistic spectrum and of his father. The role of psychoanalysis and of the psychoanalyst in promoting the creation of an internal home will be described with reference to technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to deal with the feelings of despair and hope in the analyses of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) children. The analyst’s therapeutic despair and hope might reflect both the child’s split-off and fragmented primitive unconscious phantasies regarding traumatic breakdown, as well as his or her hidden search for reparation. This autistic reparation involves the phantasised acquisition of bodily and mental coverage and containing forms. These phantasies are deposited in the analyst and are manifested in various, sometimes hallucinatory, states of body and mind. The analyst’s ability to move freely between states of despair and hope is thus a crucial factor in maintaining mental space, in reaching for a better understanding of the child and in promoting his development. Using clinical material drawn from two analyses of a young girl and a male adolescent, the article describes the analyst’s countertransference reactions of somatic hallucinations and the phantasies regarding ‘the virtual child’. These represent both the child’s attempts to use the analyst’s mind in order to get rid of catastrophic fears of breakdown and change as well as to convey various means of phantasised autistic reparation and hopes for a benign psychological birth. All these are part of the process of ‘mantling’, in which the child acquires advanced forms of psychic coverage replacing previous autistic objects and autistic sensation shapes. In addition, an attempt is made to differentiate between false and true hope in the process of emergence from autistic encapsulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents information on a study of curiosity in human development and within the psychoanalytic process. Influence of the relationship between infant and the caregiver on the development of curiosity; Function of curiosity in its more mature forms; Importance of curiosity in the individual's psychic fabric; Importance of being attentive to the diverse expressions of curiosity and its absence; Vignettes that illustrate the impact of curiosity during therapy.