Death, mourning and family structure: observation of the child in clinical psychoanalysis

The specificity of clinical work with small children questions the established knowledge about the symptoms and the possibilities of the psychoanalytic approach. When children are concerned, clinical work have in view the crossing of subjectivities, the difficulties and possibilities of the patient, his/her parents and the analyst. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of clinical work with children in the process of reconfiguring the family structure. The study of a clinical case was favored, focusing on the experience of mourning and its destinies in the family fabric. The articulation of the signs that the small child presents in a symbolic network which makes the displacement of the psychosomatic manifestations possible in the direction of the other alternatives of subjective reconstruction indicate to us that there is much to be done in an analysis in the field of prevention, in which early interventions already constitute the treatment itself.

psychoanalysis; psychosomatic; childhood; family; asthma