ADDRESSING THE PSYCHIC REALITY OF THE BORDERLINE CHILD

摘要

I wish to begin my presentation with a very ordinary event that was described earlier in a paper by Fonagy et al. on 'Aggression and the psychological self (1993). A 14-month-old child picks up his cup and begins hammering with it on a French-polished table. His grandfather tells him to stop destroying the table and takes the cup away. Deprived of his hammer, the child 'hits the table twice then cries angrily' (p. 474). The child's mother comes to comfort him, but he in return strikes her hard. Disregarding this reaction, she hands him his drum and stick. The boy's face lights up and he starts making a loud rhythmic noise, looking around and vocalising.