AGGRESSION, INANIMATE OBJECTS AND THE FAN TASY OF INVULNERABILITY

Some highly aggressive children prefer to symbolize and express their inner experiences by toys, which represent ''things'' and not living c reatures. The special function of this preference represents a defense structure of deanimation after traumatization. It implicates the phan tasy, that inanimated objects are not part of the vivid dialogue and c an ''survive'' every attack. Thus in the transferential relationship t he deanimation can slowly be reanimated by borrowing the undestroyable aspects of a thing in combination with the suffering feelings of the therapist.