The Verbal Squiggle Game in Treating the Seriously Disturbed Patient

Abstract

The psychoanalytic treatment of the seriously disturbed patient depends on working through the countertransference. If the analyst regresses without debilitating anxiety to early levels of psychic development, as does the analysand while reliving his or her early traumatic psychic development, both analyst and analysand may be able to enter states of reverie simultaneously and to communicate with one another in a type of verbal squiggle game. In this variant of Winnicott's written squiggle game, each may easily communicate with the other with quick shifts from the autistic-contiguous, paranoid-schizoid, and depressive positions. During such unusual periods of exquisite understanding, very early pathological experiences can be relived, understood, and repaired.