Anna Freud Melanie Klein And The Psychoanalysis Of Children And Adolescents

The central theme of this book is concerned with the controversies on technique between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein in the 1920s and 1930s, and with a clear differentiation between child analysis proper and analytical child psychotherapy. Alex Holder takes into account the historic background in which child psychoanalysis developed, especially World War II and the Nazi regime in Germany. The author also looks at the way child psychoanalysis developed in specific institutions, such as the Hampstead Child Therapy Course in London, and in specific areas, such as the spread of child analysis in the US. The concluding chapter is on the importance of knowledge of child analysis among psychoanalysts working with adults. The differences in the theories of the two "greats" in child analysis, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, are examined one by one, including such concepts as the role of transference, the Oedipus complex and the superego.

Since Freud’s publication of 'Little Hans', advances in psychoanalytic technique and theory have transformed our clinical work with children. Individuals including Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott have influenced psychoanalytic play therapy and broadened the scope of practice with them. Contemporary psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic social work clinicians often find themselves responding to misapprehensions and distortions about psychoanalytic theory and treatment created or promoted in popular culture. Furthermore, clinical practices are subject to the disruptive influence of managed mental health care and, with the ascendancy of biological psychiatry, an increasing reliance on psychoactive drugs in the treatment of children, often in the absence of sound research support. In this book, expert international contributors explore developmental, theoretical and clinical themes in work with children. Focusing on diverse populations and varied treatment settings, they present compelling clinical cases and research that, collectively, demonstrate the efficacy and relevance of psychoanalytic ideas in the context of play therapy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Psychoanalytic Social Work.

Child analysis has occupied a special place in the history of psychoanalysis because of the challenges it poses to practitioners and the clashes it has provoked among its advocates. Since the early days in Vienna under Sigmund Freud child psychoanalysts have tried to comprehend and make comprehensible to others the psychosomatic troubles of childhood and to adapt clinical and therapeutic approaches to all the stages of development of the baby, the child, the adolescent and the young adult. Claudine and Pierre Geissmann trace the history and development of child analysis over the last century and assess the contributions made by pioneers of the discipline, whose efforts to expand its theoretical foundations led to conflict between schools of thought, most notably to the rift between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Now taught and practised widely in Europe, the USA and South America, child and adolescent psychoanalysis is unique in the insight it gives into the psychological aspects of child development, and in the therapeutic benefits it can bring both to the child and its family.

Reading Anna Freud provides an accessible introduction to the writings of one of the most significant figures in the history of psychoanalysis.

While much writing has been devoted, predominantly by contemporary Kleinian adult psychoanalysts, to the Kleinian and post Kleinian development of Klein's work, comparatively little has recently been written about the ongoing importance and character of Klein's clinical work for contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy or analysis with very small children (2 - 6 year olds). Little attention now seems to be paid to the revolutionary character of her work from the start (in the early 1920s) with this age group and its challenges, still relevant today, or to her recognition of the importance of mother-infant relations in the period long before World War II brought investigation into and understanding of problems of attachment, separation and loss. This book addresses these issues and re-explores Klein's work in these (and other) areas. This book is concerned primarily with Klein's work with pre-latency children and aims to give these small children more of the voice today that Melanie Klein herself discovered.

Although there have been many other important contributions to the field of child and adolescent analysis, the major differences in theory and approach still bear the hallmarks of three of the most significant figures in the field: Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott. As well as providing an insight into these differences, this volume from the Psychoanalytic Ideas Series also portrays the state of child analysis today, whereby we need to reconcile and combine these differences to reveal a common ground from where we can move forward. This is represented by the sheer diversity of the perspectives in this volume, as they in turn show how they can influence the field of child analysis today.'This book represents an attempt to portray the state of child psychoanalysis in the British Psychoanalytical Society today. It offers a variety of clinical and theoretical perspectives, and attempts to demonstrate how they influence the world of child analysis in this country.

This book describes the lives and theories of the pioneer child psychoanalysts who created the field of child psychoanalysis and contributed to the understanding of child development. It aims to expose emerging professionals in the field of psychoanalysis to theories of infant experiences.

Extending Horizons presents a wide-ranging collection of papers by leading practitioners in the field of analytic psychotherapy with children and young people, surveying recent developments in technique and theory; the application of the discipline to special areas of work; and its integration, in certain contexts, with other systems such as family and group psychotherapy. From its origins in the traditional 'one-to-one relationship' between therapist and patient, as exemplified in the pioneering work of Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Margaret Lowenfeld, the contributors to this present volume demonstrate how child and adolescent psychotherapy has advanced its frontiers in recent years to deal with specific areas of concern, such as child sexual abuse and mental or physical disability, and adapted itself - sometimes, initially, as a result of pressures imposed by the lack of adequate resources - to applications in wider settings where multi-disciplinary factors are engaged and the 'one-to-one relationship' is waived in preference to parent/child, family or group modes of treatment.