Contrasting Neurotic Styles in the Analysis of Two Preschool Children

Abstract

The first child to be treated psychoanalytically was a preschooler, and his short and successful treatment was skillfully supervised by Freud. In the follow-up many years later, he had remained well. An untreated child, with a different neurotic illness, grew up to become the Wolfman, and his subsequent treatment was “interminable” and not too successful. The two cases represent contrasting neurotic styles and pose an interesting hypothetical “what if?”: What if the Wolfman had also been treated psychoanalytically as a child? Would the outcome in adult life have been equally successful? To provide even a tentative answer would seem to depend on finding two similar cases and having them treated by the same child analyst, using the same technique governed by the same underlying theoretical assumptions over the same period of time. Two fairly similar cases were found, meeting the criteria for circumscribed and diffuse neurosis and both were treated by the same child analyst until the neurotic impediments had been removed and normal development was resumed.