A paradoxical effect of guilt in the psychotherapy of children

I have described paradoxical naughtiness due to guilt which occurs in some child patients during therapy and, if undetected and not interpreted, can escalate to destructive proportions. A clear conceptualization of the superego developmental line is crucial since it provides a framework for understanding the shifting superego transferences as played out by the child. The prohibitive and the loving superego transferences in turn provide the specific material for interpretations that lead to new identifications with the therapist's benign superego and at times eventual understanding of the child's internalization and distortion of parental superego functions from the past.