Elsa's sexual fantasies in a narcissistic and erotic transference

Abstract

Infantile sexual fantasies were played and acted in imaginary scenarios for the next two years until the child gained a secure sense of self and identity, leading to a more Oedipal configuration. ‘Elsa’, a developmentally mature two-year-old child in dyadic therapy with her detached mother, illustrates the role of infantile sexuality and the use of manic defenses against primitive depressive reactions to her parents’ unavailability. The psychoanalytic treatment of Elsa, age four, revealed erotic transference as a narcissistic double and as a maternal figure. Elsa's presenting issue was anal retention, which made her mother panicky. In her wolf game, Elsa showed her ambivalent transference and projected her primary fantasy: to be eaten by a mother figure. Elsa gave an understanding of her sexual myth of oral impregnation playing with the baby who was inside the doll: a mother gets a baby by eating. When Elsa got older, her fantasy moved to a phallic representation.