‘Clinical commentary’

‘Commentary by a consultant child psychotherapist and research fellow based at the Tavistock centre’ (Cathy Urwin) on a previously presented case.
It begins:

This is a moving account of work with a latency boy, Mohammed. In the previous week his therapist told him that his once-weekly therapy will end in the following July, two terms away. Mohammed's experience of this is immediate and total, eclipsing everything. As far as his sense of time goes, therapy might as well be ending in 5 minutes. The intensity of the pain of the rejection and disillusion feels equal and opposite to the gains that he has made. In this state of mind, Mohammed questions whether it would have been better not to have had this work at all. Mohammed is determined that the therapist should feel that everything is inside out and upside down.