Precarities Of 21st Century Childhoods

This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores internal and external precarities in the lives of children. The goal of the book is to illuminate, promote, and help situate subjectivities that are often blotted out for both the child and society.

In this vital volume, Erica Burman presents a synthesis of her work developed over the past decade. Building from her path-breaking critiques of developmental psychology to the strategy of plural developments, her more recent work elaborates a new approach, generated from postcolonial, feminist intersectionality and migration studies: Child as method. This text amplifies the Child as method’s success as a distinct way of exploring the alignments of current ‘new materialist’ or posthumanist approaches with supposedly ‘older’ materialist analyses, including Marxist theory, feminist theory, anticolonial approaches and psychoanalytic perspectives. It assumes that childhood is a material practice, both undertaken by children themselves and by those who live and work with them, as well as by those who define politics, policies and popular culture about children. Key chapters interrogate historical legacies arising from the Eurocentric origins of what are now globalised models of modern childhood and evaluate the problems posed by the structure of emotion and affectivity that surrounds children and childhood – by tracing its evolution and indicating some of its unhelpful current effects in recentring white/Majority world subjectivities Child as Method provides key contributions to a range of disciplines and debates including developmental psychology, critical childhood studies, education studies, legal studies, health and social care and literature.

Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen examines Eigen’s rich phenomenological work on the Obstructive Object. The contributors to this collection explore the core theme with reference to key Eigen works, including The Psychotic Core, Psychic Deadness, Toxic Nourishment, and Damaged Bonds. This volume seeks to elaborate on the Obstructive Object through essays and poems that include poignant clinical examples, the impact of exceptionally traumatized patients on their analysts, literature comparisons, and the more "mystical aspect" of Eigen’s influence on working with the obstructive object. Essays draw from Virginia Woolf, Elena Ferrante, Wilfred Bion, D.W. Winnicott, Andrè Greene, Christopher Bollas, and Adam Phillips, among many others, in exploring injury-rage, unwanted patients, psychoanalytic faith, toxic nourishment, and damaged bonds. Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen will greatly interest psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and those interested in psychoanalytic and spiritual psychology.

Following Freud's rather cold conception of fathers and a relative neglect of their role in psychoanalytic theory is a challenge to continue more recent efforts to develop a psychoanalytically affirmative portrait of fatherhood. Here, fathers are attuned to relational mutuality and intimacy as a source of flourishing. Rapprochement is understood as a sub-phase of child development marked by a dramatic expression of conflict such as, "Hear me, see me, give me space, don't give me space." In addition, rapprochement is considered to characterize conflicts between autonomy and dependency across the lifespan. An often muted and subtle tension between holding and letting go persists. Working with what is felt entails entering a never fully completed negotiation marked by misreadings, bias, and illusion. 'Father' is understood to be a name pointing to a parenting function. With material that includes the grief of failed reunion, particular stories are mediated through thinking alongside philosophy and psychoanalytic theory in order to further explore the difficulty of integrating nurturing capacities into conceptions of masculinity. As a critique of gendered rigidity, a case is made for a social surround that declares mutual vulnerability to exist in a state of permanent inquiry and relational curiosity. Such openness can function to aid parents, clinicians, and respective community members to privilege the development of increased frustration tolerance. By extension, a good-enough father is one who recognizes breakdown, a need for refueling, and possesses and practices a willingness to encounter uneven rhythms in human dimensions. This thoughtful work brings fresh insight into the role of the father and masculinity and is essential reading for mental health professionals.

Reading Lacan's Écrits is the first extensive set of commentaries on the complete edition of Lacan's Écrits to be published in English, providing an indispensable companion piece to some of Lacan's best-known but notoriously challenging writings. With the contributions of some of the world's most renowned Lacanian scholars and analysts, Reading Lacan's Écrits encompasses a series of systematic, paragraph-by-paragraph commentaries that not only contextualise, explain and interrogate Lacan's arguments but also afford the reader multiple interpretive routes through the complete edition of Lacan's most labyrinthine of texts. Considering the significance of Écrits as a landmark in the history of psychoanalysis, this far-reaching and accessible guide will sustain and continue to animate critical engagement with one of the most challenging intellectual works of the twentieth century. These volumes act as an essential and incisive reference-text for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice, as well as philosophers, cultural theorists and literary, social science and humanities researchers. This volume covers the first two sections of the Écrits, providing close readings of the first eight essays.

This book introduces the inter-disciplinary study of childhood and youth and the multi-agency practice of professionals who serve the needs of children, young people and their families. Exploring key theories and central ideas, research methodology, policy and practice, it takes a holistic, contextual approach that values difference and diversity. It examines concepts such as identity, representation, creativity and discourse and issues such as ethnicity, gender and the ′childhood in crisis′ thesis. Furthermore, it challenges opinion by exploring complex and controversial modern-day issues, and by engaging with a range of perspectives to highlight debates within the field.

In Growing Up: Revisiting Child Development Theories and their Application to Patients of All Ages, editors Henri Parens and Salman Akhtar present a collection that draws on over fifty years of professional experience in child development. Contributors to this collection touch on psychoanalytic conceptualizations of child development, separation-individuation theory, personal clinical experiences, the effects of trauma and neurodevelopmental disorders in the mother-child relationship, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. This edited collection is recommended for scholars and practitioners interested in psychoanalysis, child development, and clinical psychology.

Each year millions of American adults visit a childhood home. Few can anticipate the effect it will have on them. Often serving several important psychological needs, these trips are not intended as visits with people from their past. Rather, those returning to their homes have a strong desire to visit the places that comprised the landscape of their childhood. Approximately one third of American adults over the age of thirty have visited a childhood home. This book describes some of their experiences and the psychology behind the journeys. Most people who visit a childhood home are motivated by a desire to connect with their past. Seeing the buildings, schools, parks, and playgrounds from their youth helps to establish the psychological and emotional link between the child in the black-and-white photographs and the person they are today. Many people use the trip to get in touch with the values and principles they were taught as children, often as a means to get their lives back on track. Others use that journey to strengthen emotional bonds between themselves and loved ones. Still others return to former homes to work through psychological issues left over from sad or traumatic childhoods. No matter the reason, there are few experiences in one's life that can move a person as deeply and unpredictably as returning home.