Ten Little Monkeys

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Notes

Marked facial expressions— exaggerated expressions such as very wide eyes and raised brows —are typically a signal that what the adult is communicating to the child is “pretend.” The adult is letting the child know that she recognizes the child's affect state and empathizes with the child, but that she herself does not have the same emotions (Fonagy et al., 2002).

Applied behavioral analysis is a method of behavior therapy developed by Lovaas that is frequently used in the treatment of autistic children. In this case, the ABA therapist had counseled Mother to tell Bobby it was time to go to bed and then to shut the door of his room and hold it closed while Bobby cried and screamed inside his bedroom.

Sometimes his mother or I would mention something about school, and he would abruptly sit up straight and ask urgently, in a distressed voice, “School bus? School bus?”— in other words asking if he were going to school.

I would like to thank my colleague Dr. Steven Cooper for highlighting these texts for me.

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Notes on contributors

Alexandra M. Harrison

Alexandra Harrison is a Training and Supervising Analyst in Adult, Child, and Adolescent Analysis at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and an Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School at the Cambridge Health Alliance.