i:
I?
i
I ON THE TECHNIQUE OF CHILD-ANALYSIS 293
i produces in the child an anxiety-situation. To lie down awakens
in the child the memory of some real or imagined scene of being overpowered: one will be afraid of a beating, another of an operation, and both are overcome by their secret feeling of guilt, a fear of castration. ■Adolescent patients imagine themselves while lying down to be under hypnosis and exposed to rape. Seduction phantasies of both homosexual and heterosexual nature which are projected on to the analyst play a great part witlK so-called 'nervous' boys and girls when they have to lie down.
A fifteen-year old boy who came for my educative treatment on account of a serious phobia of thunderstorms and earthquakes, confessed to me in the course of analysis that he would certainly have resisted the treatment if he had been obliged to lie down on / ' the sofa which, he had heard, a family acquaintance had had to
do in his analysis, for he was in continual dread of being hypnot- ized. As a matter of fact this boy had worked himself into such a serious condition of excitement during a consultation with a nerve specialist at home, who tried to hypnotize him, that he cried out 'Pohce' and iinally dashed out of the house in a panic into the street.'
I have never noticed that the success of the analysis is in any way imperilled by the fact that the analyst faces the patient.
The first hour in treatment is of the utmost importance; it is the opportunity for establishing a rapport with the young creature, and for 'breaking the ice'. It causes much strain and stress to the beginner and opens up even to the experienced analyst nearly always new methods of approach and new guiding lines. But no rules and no programme can be laid down; the intellectual devel- opment, the age, and the temperament of the patient must decide which course to pursue.
In the case of more mature patients, often the right course is for the analyst to confess himself as such openly, in order to gain their confidence whole heartedly.
The mother of a nervous girl of fourteen introduced me to her daughter as a friend whom she had not seen for many years, but the girl was not to be deceived by this; after a little while she enquired: 'But who are you really?' My honest explanation, namely, that I was interested in young people who find Hfe very difficult and are unable to grapple with it, and that I should like to help her, too, to get on better with her mother, had the de-
