Abstract
Children in states of retreat and disengagement are likely to experience therapy as a confirmation of a persecutory reality and of their own “badness.” In the countertransference, therapists are often likely to experience themselves either as intrusive and clumsy or as avoidant and ineffective. In working with such youngsters, therapists need to realize that their experiences in the room might have less to do with the child's projections and more with the lack of such projections. To bypass the paralysis created in the room, to be able to engage with such patients, therapists need to find a language, verbal or nonverbal, that enables them to get closer and to engage with patients. They need to search, in the bits and pieces projected in the room and in their own reactions, for the metaphors of patients' existence that would enable them to create a space in which the child's experiences can be expressed and explored.