CHAPTER FOUR
On not being able to
dream: the role of
maternal containment in
the therapy of a young
child who suffered from
night terrors
Christine Anzieu-Premmereur
‘The French psychoanalyst, Jean Bertrand Pontalis
(4972), wrote: “dreaming is fist of all the effort to
‘sintain an impossible union with the mathe".
In his theory ofthe Skin Ego, Le Moi-peau, Didier
-Anzien (2980) explored the way in which the infant's
first experiences of being touched by the mother
‘organises a container in the relationship for psyehie
funetioning capable of providing « mental space in
‘which representations and fantasies can be stored. If
this maternal container is stable and flexible enough,
an infant’ early fears and anxieties are transformed
into less violent experiences and can then be
associated with dreams
Wilired Bion (1962) spoke of a “mental skin” that
will lle the introjection ofthinkable elements, But
if archaic fears are too intense, they will block this
process and so interfere with the infant's access to
jeaeuiineelitihiiesieibisieatMaatiaed.My work with young children has made me avare
‘of their ability to create representations that give a
sense of their early, disorganised experiences, and of
hhow these have been integrated. The transference
enables a process of representation and
symbolisation, through play and through the
‘exchange of feelings that ean be taken in, contained,
‘and processed during the session,
Reports of dreams are frequent in child analysis;
‘you merely have to ask children while they are playing
‘or draving, “Like something in your bad dreams, is
82" Young children absorbed in their activities are
very close to their preconseious and this makes it easy
for them totalk about or demonstrate their dreams.
Primitive anxieties associnted with defects in the
maternal object are at the core of most analytic
treatments with these ebildren, Dreams help to show
the connection with the object and to mai
‘protection against the fear of an omnipotent maternal
figure.
‘The capacity to dream and create representations:
that are sufficiently well-organised to be remembered
is, however, linked to good emotional regulation and
symbolisation. Some children never attain this ability
because ofa lack of containment of their disorganised
and often traumatising experiences.
Peter
T shall now present the fist sessions with Peter, who
vwas five when T met him. He suffered from bouts of
night terror; he was unable to sleep without acting out
his fears, and he was an anorexic and depressed child.
Tn the analytic setting, a dream is an important
representation that helps the analyst to capture the
child's fantasies in the transference, and i ea allow
access to the preverbal and pre-symbolle experiences
of early infancy.
is a process of representation with afunction of wish fulfilment, but itis also associated
‘with traumatic experiences of pre-symbolie origin,
Ferenczi hypothesis (1931) was that dreams serve to
recover memory traces of painful sensations. This
possibility of working through experience, which
Ferenczi called the traumatolytic funetion of dreams,
is close to the idea of “healing dreams” in Winnicott's
“Hate in the counter-transference” (1049)
In order to become communicable, emotions must
{g0 through a process of transformation and take on a
symbolic form: emotional experiences are thus
transformed and new connections are set up. In
ion’s theory (1962), it is from dreams that the
‘unconscious develops. Dreaming is seen as the most
important component of the “psyeho-analytie
function of the personality”. For Bion, a chil is bora
‘with a rudimentary consciousness and senses stimuli,
Dut is unaware of himself Bion noted (1962), “The
mother's capacity for reverie isthe receptor organ for
the infant's harvest of self-sensation gained by its
conscious.” Through her reverie, her ability to receive
and transform the chilé’s projective identifications,
the mother expresses her love forthe ehild, contains
his anxieties, and provides him with the means of
forming an alpha-function of his own based on the
experience of being cared for by her.
What is important is the child's ability to create
representations: that he can eteate representations
fand images out of sensations and perceptions, and
can develop images of his relationship with his
parents. The support and the holding that the mother
provides for her baby ensure the continuity of his
‘memory of sensations, pleasant or unpleasant. With
the aid of her mirroring funetion, the mother returns
his experiences tothe child, transformed in a way that
‘makes them fel “its own”.
‘The capacity of the mother's unconselous to bind