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Casper or ‘the cabinet of horrors’
Author(s) -
Cavalli Alessandra
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5922.2007.00688.x
Subject(s) - cabinet (room) , grasp , reading (process) , psychoanalysis , psychology , identity (music) , philosophy , art , aesthetics , linguistics , visual arts , computer science , programming language
: This paper is an account of a four‐times‐a‐week analysis with a very deprived, feral‐like child. The author, who has come to understand feral children as very deprived children, turns to an historical account written in 1826 by Anselm von Feuerbach, the jurist who was asked to make enquiries into the identity of a savage and mysterious boy, Kaspar Hauser. The author describes how she has made use of the observations and thoughts of Anselm von Feurbach in her attempts to process her own thoughts and reflections around the unfolding clinical material and how the exploration of the differences and similarities between Casper and Kaspar Hauser helped her to gradually grasp the psychological essence of the patient. The question of an appropriate reading of the clinical material for theoretical purposes remains open.