“I ” and “The Other I ”

A Case Report of a Ten-Year-Old Girl Who Retreated and Hid Herself from Reality

Abstract

This paper presents the psychotherapeutic process for a ten-year-old girl who exhibited maladjustment to groups and panic-like behavior. In the early stage of psychotherapy, she avoided expressing herself and entering into relationships with the therapist. This was a retreat from establishing subjectivity. It seemed that her psychological task overlapped with the developmental task of establishing “I ” in preadolescence. She found “I ” inside herself in various dimensions, through images in dreams and sandplays, and appeared as the “I ” in reality. In addition, an image of “the other I ” appeared as an imaginary companion and “I ” in dreams. She identified herself through being irradiated by “the other I .” It seemed that she established subjectivity and self-relationship through the process of psychotherapy.