The Analysis of an Overstimulated Child

Abstract

This paper shows how environmental and medical overstimulation affected a latency girl in all her developmental phases, leading to severe impairment of object relationships. These factors are seen against the background of an acrimonious parental divorce.

Suzie's negative body image was inextricably interwoven with anxieties about her masturbation activities and castration fantasies and this was fueled by her physical condition (lichen sclerosis et atrophicis). She was in a constant state either of withdrawnness or excitement. The initial task of the treatment was to provide Suzie with a holding environment so that she could find alternative means of gratification and control in order to manage within a more organized secondary process mode. When her difficulties around excitation abated, she could begin to make analytic use of verbalization, clarification, and interpretations.