Unexplained pains in the abdomen, asthma, frequent sore throats… Psychoanalyst Willy Barral is convinced that with such symptoms a child can express what was always hushed up in previous generations of his family.
Psychologies: You argue that psychosomatic disorders in children express the unresolved problems of their parents — not in words, but in symptoms of illness. How to distinguish these symptoms from common diseases?
Willy Barral: Any disease, as the word itself says, is pain, suffering, which cannot be expressed in words and in any case requires treatment. Therefore, I prefer not to classify diseases, not to divide them into different groups. Body and soul are one. The body thinks, speaks and desires, and the soul incarnates in the body. Therefore, the treatment of the body should not exclude the treatment of the soul.
When a child suffers from a chronic disease that does not respond to treatment, one should try to unravel the meaning of the symptoms.
Psychosomatic disorders are not amenable to classical drug treatment, but they are not imaginary diseases. They are very real. Manifesting that suffering that finds no other means to express itself, these diseases reveal a story that, for some reason, has remained untold. When a child suffers from a chronic disease that does not respond to treatment, one should try to unravel the meaning of the symptoms. But, alas, adults too often do not take the child seriously and do not even try to listen to what his body is saying with the help of colic or headaches.
How does a child capture and imprint in his body what is not expressed by his parents?
The greatest child psychoanalyst, Françoise Dolto, viewed the child as a person driven by his own needs. She argued, for example, that from the very conception, children feel the desire to communicate with people. It really manifests itself when the child is fluent in speech, but lives in his body from birth.
With the help of the skin, the sense organs, the child unconsciously captures and assimilates the mental history of his parents. So he «is embodied in family history.» Dolto did not invent it, but literally observed. In their drawings, the children talked about what was unknown to their parents, but which was later confirmed by their grandparents! The baby speaks with his five senses, but it is difficult for parents to understand what he wants to convey to them. After all, they are accustomed to communicate with the help of words.
What unspoken family secrets can manifest in a child as an illness?
The child is given ghosts, «skeletons in the closet», as Freud said, all unresolved questions … Everything that previous generations denied in their family history traumatizes the next. But there is a difference between a secret and what is not said. The secret is our right and necessity. Our mental security is based on the ability to “hide” information from ourselves (due to psychological defense mechanisms). The secret concerns only one person, it has an absolutely private character.
It is important that parents do not feel guilty
The unspoken secret, on the contrary, becomes that part of the history of the family that belongs to everyone (albeit to varying degrees), but is hidden at the same time. The most common reason for silence is shame. It flows from generation to generation until the abscess breaks. It becomes clear why a child suffering from a psychosomatic symptom plays a special, dual role: they want to silence him (“Nothing, your stomach just hurts”), but at the same time secretly hope that deliverance will come through him (“Well, do something We don’t know what to do anymore).
So what to do when the child’s illness does not go away?
Each symptom is associated with a specific story and therefore expressed in a specific way (stuttering, abdominal pain, asthma, chronic tonsillitis, etc.). In order to understand its meaning, one must first try to free oneself from the desire to control everything and recognize that the child can express this suffering only with the help of his body. Often, when parents do just that, the symptom disappears on its own.
The child is not just «sick» — he has some knowledge. Therefore, you can ask him to tell us the right direction: “How can I understand you?” The answer is here, it is ready, it is not a riddle that only psychoanalysts can solve. When a child expresses his message through the body, parents can turn to a specialist or come with him to a special children’s center, where they will help to understand what the psychosomatic disorder is talking about even in the smallest children.
It is important that parents do not feel guilty. Francoise Dolto said: «Everything happens because of you, but not through your fault.» Being a parent means being responsible. If we agree to hear what the child’s unconscious wants to tell us, the symptoms of the disease will become unnecessary.
About the expert: Willy Barral is a psychoanalyst, a student of Françoise Dolto. He also studied Jungian analysis. In 1995, he created the first psychological support service for young children in Armenia in Yerevan.