Psychoanalytic Therapy With Infants And Their Parents

Psychoanalytic Therapy with Infants and Parents provides a clear guide to clinical psychoanalytic work with distressed babies and unhappy parents, a numerous clinical group so often in need of urgent help. Although psychoanalytic work is primarily verbal, and infants may have limited language, this form of treatment is receiving increased attention among therapists. Björn Salomonsson explores how such work can be possible and benefit infants, how to work with the parents (especially the mother), and how major psychoanalytic concepts such as primal repression, infantile sexuality and transference can be worked with and understood in these therapies. Björn Salomonsson argues that attachment concepts, though important, cannot solely help explain everyday problems with breastfeeding, sleeping, and weaning, or more recalcitrant interaction disorders. He shows how we also need psychoanalytic concepts to better understand, not only such "baby worries", but also adult clients' non-verbal communications and interactions. Throughout, he uses extensive practice-based examples and also refers to his research which provides evidence for the effectiveness of this practice. Psychoanalytic Therapy with Infants and Parents provides a unique perspective on working psychoanalytically with parents and infants. This book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and therapists working with children as well as adults.

The Practice of Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy is a comprehensive handbook, addressing the provision of therapeutic help for babies and their parents when their attachment relationship is troubled and a risk is posed to the baby's development. Drawing on clinical and research data from neuroscience, attachment and psychoanalysis, the book presents a clinical treatment approach that is up-to-date, flexible and sophisticated, whilst also being clear and easy to understand. The first section: The theory of psychoanalytic parent infant psychotherapy – offers the reader a theoretical framework for understanding the emotional-interactional environment within which infant development takes place. The second section, The therapeutic process, invites the reader into the consulting room to participate in a detailed examination of the relational process in the clinical encounter. The third section, Clinical papers, provides case material to illustrate the unfolding of the therapeutic process. This new edition draws on evidence from contemporary research, with new material on: Embodied communication between parent and infant and clinician-patient/s Fathers and fathering Engagement of at-risk populations Written by a team of experienced clinicians, writers, teachers and researchers in the field of infant development and psychopathology, The Practice of Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy will be an essential resource for all professionals working with children and their families, including child psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and clinical and developmental psychologists.

The Practice of Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy is a comprehensive handbook, addressing the provision of therapeutic help for babies and their parents when their attachment relationship is troubled and a risk is posed to the baby's development. Drawing on clinical and research data from neuroscience, attachment and psychoanalysis, the book presents a clinical treatment approach that is up-to-date, flexible and sophisticated, whilst also being clear and easy to understand. The first section: The theory of psychoanalytic parent infant psychotherapy – offers the reader a theoretical framework for understanding the emotional-interactional environment within which infant development takes place. The second section, The therapeutic process, invites the reader into the consulting room to participate in a detailed examination of the relational process in the clinical encounter. The third section, Clinical papers, provides case material to illustrate the unfolding of the therapeutic process. This new edition draws on evidence from contemporary research, with new material on: Embodied communication between parent and infant and clinician-patient/s Fathers and fathering Engagement of at-risk populations Written by a team of experienced clinicians, writers, teachers and researchers in the field of infant development and psychopathology, The Practice of Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy will be an essential resource for all professionals working with children and their families, including child psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and clinical and developmental psychologists.

This is a comprehensive handbook, full of vital information on the theory and practice of infant-parent psychotherapy, that will revolutionise the treatment of babies. It is essential reading for all professionals working with children. This volume is based upon the author's observations and treatment of over 3,500 parents and their infants throughout several decades. With its roots in the major fields of psychology, such as developmental psychology and psychoanalysis of early life, she has created an exciting and ground-breaking new field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy - infant-parent psychotherapy. It focuses on pre-verbal communication with babies, using the simple tools of experience and observation. In the first chapters, the history and background of infant-parent psychotherapy are laid out. Then, its application to understanding babies is detailed, demonstrating the psychodynamic approach in theory and in practice. Once the basics are explained, the author presents a step-by-step guide on how to assess, diagnose and treat babies, including case studies for practical illustration.

Working With Fathers in Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy interfaces theoretical ideas about fatherhood and their incorporation into the clinical practice of psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy. Often, when a family attends parent-infant psychotherapy, issues of the father are eclipsed by attention to the mother, who is usually the identified patient. Until now relatively neglected in the literature, this book attends to both the barriers to psychological work with the father, and to ways in which he can be engaged in a therapeutic process. In this book, Tessa Baradon brings together some of the most eminent clinicians and academics in the field of parent-infant psychotherapy, in a layered collection of theoretical and clinical contributions. She and her co-discussants, Björn Salomonsson and Kai von Klitzing, conclude with an integration and critique of the themes presented, exploring the ideas of their fellow contributors and expanding on the central themes of the work. Working With Fathers in Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy will be of interest to mental health practitioners working with infants, who will learn that each individual and the family as a system can benefit from such an inclusive approach.

This book provides a clear guide to work with distressed babies and unhappy parents, a numerous clinical group so often in need of urgent help.

This book presents an interdisciplinary discussion between researchers and clinicians about trauma in the relationship between infants and their parents. It makes an innovative contribution to the field of infant mental health in bringing together previously separated paradigms of relational trauma from psychoanalysis, attachment and the neurosciences. With contributions from a range of experts, areas of discussion include: intergenerational transmission of relational trauma and earliest intervention the nature of the traumatising encounter between parent and infant the therapeutic possibilities of parent-infant psychotherapy in changing the trajectory of transmitted trauma training and supporting professionals working with traumatised parents and infants. Relational Trauma in Infancy will be of particular interest to trainee and qualified child and adult psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, child and adult psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, health care professionals and social workers.

Sleep problems are among the most common, urgent and undermining troubles parents meet. This book describes Dilys Daws' pioneering method of therapy for sleep problems, honed over 40 years of work with families: brief psychoanalytic therapy with parents and infants together. Offering tried and tested ways of helping parents work things out better with their babies when such problems arise, this new edition of Dilys Daws’ classic work, updated with expert help from Sarah Sutton, frees professionals from the burden of feeling they need to rush to give advice to families, showing instead how to begin the challenging journey of discovering new emotions that every baby brings. It sheds light on the sleep problem in the context of a whole range of aspects of the early world: the regulation of babies’ physiological states; dreams and nightmares; the development of separateness; separation and attachment problems; and connections with feeding and weaning. This much-needed, compassionate and well-informed guide to helping parents and babies with sleep problems draws on twenty-first century development research and rich clinical wisdom to offer ways of understanding sleep problems in each individual family context, with all its particular pressures and possibilities. It will be treasured by new parents struggling with sleeplessness and is enormously valuable for anyone working with parents and their babies.