Little Streamer: learning the unconscious symbolism of computer jargon

Abstract

A Chinese student of psychoanalytic child therapy, Hu Fangjia (HF), presented to a small clinical case consultation group an obsessional thirteen-year-old boy who spoke of nothing but equipment for streaming video games. A Western small group consultant, Jill Savege Scharff (JSS), encouraged the bored group to consider the unconscious symbolism in the boy’s obsessive communication in order to sustain interest in understanding his experience of loss and neglect as the eldest living boy in his family.