On the child of psychoanalysis: A structural perspective

We, as analysts, are constantly confronted with the paradox between the infantile as a phantasmal reconstruction based on the patient's fantasies and recollections, and childhood as a period of maturation and development, where it is impossible to avoid a reference to chronology. Although many authors have indicated that psychoanalytic practice is based on the traumas, conflicts, wishes and fantasies of the child within the adult, what happens when the patient is a child and not an adult? This paper discusses psychoanalysis with children from a structural point of view, asserting that psychoanalysis can only be beneficial to a given child if it considers his potential as a subject, promoting a change of places within the family structure. In other words, if it helps the child to displace himself from the position as an object of parental discourse, facilitating the access to his own desire.