“My Brakes Are Broken”: Case Presentation of a Latency-Age Boy Struggling with Affect Regulation

Abstract

Parental pathology and environmental stress impacts children and can derail the developmental achievement of affect regulation, an essential ego function that has its genesis in the early relationship between the infant and his caregiver. When parents are unable to provide consistent empathic care, articulate emotions, label feelings, and put words to experiences and behaviors, it leaves a child unable to understand his internal and external world. This clinical article demonstrates the link between the function of verbalization and the development of affect regulation in a latency boy growing up in a family suffering from multiple problems. Using the clinical material from the initial and middle phases of his analysis, the process of expanding his ego capacity for affect regulation is discussed as well as the therapeutic techniques that facilitated change.

KEYWORDS:

• affect regulation
• developmental object
• developmental help
• verbalization
• parental reflective awareness
• displacement
• limit setting

Acknowledgments

A version of this article was presented to Ken Corbett at The Michigan Psychoanalytic Council Fall Conference 2010.The author is grateful to Ira J. Schaer for his generous reading and comments of drafts of this article and to Judith Batchelor for her reading and comments on the early draft of the manuscript.