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Sophie Kershaw on Woman's Hour. Family drug and alcohol courts. 13th February 2017, BBC Radio 4 [Starts at 24:10]
No full textFeature on family drug and alchohol court
Reduced laughter contagion in boys at risk for psychopathy
Get PDFHumans are intrinsically social animals, forming enduring affiliative bonds [1]. However, a striking minority with psychopathic traits, who present with violent and antisocial behaviours, tend to value other people only insofar as they contribute to their own advancement [2, 3]. Extant research has addressed the neurocognitive processes associated with aggression in such individuals, but we know remarkably little about processes underlying their atypical social affiliation. This is surprising, given the importance of affiliation and bonding in promoting social order and reducing aggression [4, 5]. Human laughter engages brain areas that facilitate social reciprocity and emotional resonance, consistent with its established role in promoting affiliation and social cohesion [6, 7, 8]. We show that, compared with typically developing boys, those at risk for antisocial behaviour in general (irrespective of their risk of psychopathy) display reduced neural response to laughter in the supplementary motor area, a premotor region thought to facilitate motor readiness to join in during social behavior [9, 10, 11]. Those at highest risk for developing psychopathy additionally show reduced neural responses to laughter in the anterior insula. This region is implicated in auditory-motor processing and in linking action tendencies with emotional experience and subjective feelings [10, 12, 13]. Furthermore, this same group reports reduced desire to join in with the laughter of others—a behavioural profile in part accounted for by the attenuated anterior insula response. These findings suggest that atypical processing of laughter could represent a novel mechanism that impoverishes social relationships and increases risk for psychopathy and antisocial behaviour
The changing context of permanency: Unifying stories in the context of divided loyalties
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The relevance of Donald Meltzer's concept of nipple-penis confusion to selective mutism and the capacity to produce language
No full textMind the baby: The role of the nanny in infant observation
No full textThe influence of nannies and other significant caregivers on a child's psychological and emotional development may be profound and if unrecognized may contribute to psychopathology in adulthood. However, the significance of the nanny has been relatively neglected within the psychoanalytic literature. In this paper I will discuss the impact of early caregivers other than the biological mother on the psychic development of the child, and the role of the nanny within the family dynamics as a figure attracting powerful unconscious phantasies and unwanted projections. These ideas will be illustrated by a detailed account of a year‐long observation of an infant who had a succession of several different nannies in her first three months before her parents employed a more permanent nanny. It is proposed that the baby's emerging attachments to her two primary caregivers, mother and nanny, developed in parallel and influenced each other, with observable impact on her behaviour and developing personality. The paper concludes with a review of the place of infant observation within psychoanalytic training and how the experience of witnessing the earliest infant‐caregiver relationships in an extra‐analytic setting both refines understanding of developmental theory and builds a foundation for psychoanalytic practice
