LOOKING FOR CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS - THE N ATURE OF CONFLICT IN CHILD ANALYSIS

Working with children, young people and families as well as adults, I have become increasingly preoccupied with the way very early formative experiences express themselves in analysis. In particular I want to c onsider how early trauma and phantasies about it express themselves in analysis. I hope to do this by using material from two children to sh ow how they were gradually able to reveal and express their trauma by the symbolic expression of phantasies around their experiences, despit e their elaborate defensive systems. I want to look at some aspects of the conceptual approaches attributed to Winnicott and Klein.