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Parenting the next child in the shadow of death
No full textThis chapter focuses on the experience of both parents when they lose a baby and the way they describe their feelings about the conception of their next infant. It then describes the difficulties some mother's encounter during this pregnancy and following the birth. The chapter considers the difficulties experienced by some children when their birth follows the death of a baby or child. This chapter presents some clinical works of author to illustrate these points. Cudmore and Judd stress the need, following the loss of a baby, for each member of the couple to act as a 'psychological container or a secure base' for his or her partner, so that within this containing experience each partner might be helped to work through his or her grief. Falling in love is an important part of the relationship between the parental couple and their new infant
Identity, identification and narcissistic phantasy in the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro
No full textThis thesis explores Ishiguro’s novels in the light of his preoccupation with emotional upheaval:the psychological devastations of trauma, persisting in memory from
childhood into middle and old age. He demonstrates how the first person narrators maintain human dignity and self-
esteem unknowingly,through specific, psychic defence mechanisms and the related behaviours,typical of narcissism.
Ishiguro’s vision has affinities with the post-Kleinian Object-Relations psychoanalyticliterature on borderline states of mind and narcissism. I propose a hybrid,critical
framework which takes account of this, along with the key aspects of the traditional humanist novel, held in tension with certain deconstructive tactics from postmodernist
writing. Post-Kleinian theory and practice sit within the humanist approach in any case, with both the ethical and the reality-seeking imperatives, paramount. Ishiguro presents humanism in the ‘deficit’ model and this framework helps to bring it into view.
The argument is supported by close readings of the six novels in which the trauma concerns different forms of fragmentation from wars, socio-historic upheaval,
geographical dislocation, and emotional disconnection. All involve psychic fragmentation of the egoin the central character,through splitting and projection.
Ishiguro,himself, perceives some sorts of object-relations,
psychic mechanisms,operating at the unconscious level,which he calls ‘appropriation’ and which the post-
Kleinians have theorised. They have found a range of variants of projectiveidentification into the ‘other’ with there-introjection of a distorted self,suffused with
narcissistic phantasy. While these defences are protective, Ishiguro seems aware that excessive projection comes at a cost: depletion of affect, weak identity, limited symbol formation,thinking and self-knowledge, and a diminished capacity to give meaning to relationships. These
factors are all borne out in his narrators’ omnipotent behaviours–in re-enaction.
Ishiguro’s narrative methods produce figurative representations of the narrators’ internal worlds through his external worlds of settings, while other conventions of the novel,such as plot, character, genre and so on,are reconfigured in their deficit versions
An outsider in the nursery
No full textThe paper is focused on an observation presented in a Young Child Observation Seminar that was held in Naples, Italy. The nursery school where the observation took place was dominated by a culture and organisation which combined to offer the young children a very impoverished experience that flattened, instead of promoting, the growth and development of their personality. The observed boy, who is called Pietro in the paper, fought to keep alive his imagination and his strong attachment to good inner objects. This resulted in his being marginalised and being cast in the role of the outsider. Subsequently he became the scapegoat of the whole class group and was used as receptacle for all the needs and feelings the group endeavoured to deny. The observation over two years also permitted the observer to see the birth of a more friendly atmosphere and a kind of counter-culture among the group of children in Pietro's class. The paper illuminates some specific additional aspects of young child observation: the study of institutions for children and the understanding of children's group dynamics. The paper is also a tribute to Margaret Rustin, describing her approach to leading seminars in young child observation
Rebecca Fortnum: Self contained
No full textSelf Contained, brings together several strands of artist Rebecca Fortnum's recent work on the formation of identity and the power of the gaze.This publication documents drawings shown at the V&A Museum of Childhood (2011–12) and works installed at the Freud Museum London (2013) and contains essays by Maria Walsh, Graham Music and Louisa Minkin as well as by Fortnum herself.'Fortnum's meditation on the self hinges on a dichotomy — is there a secret core self or are we simply a 'cluster of appurtenances' that flow into and out of other people and things?' (Maria Walsh
L'importance, pour le plein épanouissement de la capacité à apprendre, des stades développementaux précoces et des tâches qui s'y accomplissent [The importance, for the full blossoming of the capacity to learn, of the early developmental stages and the tasks that comprise these]
No full textSupporting behaviour support: Developing a model for leading and managing a unit for teenagers excluded from mainstream school
No full textIn the UK, mainstream schools can decide to exclude students because of their behaviour. Students are then placed in pupil referral units (PRUs, sometimes known as short-stay schools) until their needs can be more thoroughly assessed so that they can then be placed appropriately. This article outlines the development of one particular approach to leading and managing a PRU for students aged 11–14. Beginning with the idea that staff and students all have a range of needs to be met, the approach draws on psychoanalytic ideas of containment, holding and attachment, as well as recent neuro-developmental research, to demonstrate how students' needs can be best met through meeting the professional needs of staff. A range of interventions and areas of practice are then described to illustrate how containment, management and support are operationalised in day-to-day practice. Specific areas of impact of these interventions for students and their families are then highlighted
The development of language in the early months of life
No full textThis paper explores the nature and quality of the very early relationship between parents and their babies and the relational precursors of language development. Babies are understood to listen to and recognise parent’s voices during the later months of pregnancy. This paper discusses factors in normal and delayed language development and, uses illustrations from observations of 2 infants aged between 1 and 18 months and their relationships with their parents. The focus of these illustrations is a comparison of facilitative and impeding factors in the development of life of the mind, symbolic functioning and the relationship with subsequent language development
In the spaces between – sustaining creativity in child psychotherapy
No full textThe following paper has grown out of a spoken presentation given to the annual conference of the ACP in June 2012. Beginning from ideas that have emerged from reading and experiencing the work of Bion, the presentation attempted to apply these ideas to some of the issues that face child psychotherapists working in publicly funded health services today, and to suggest that rather than truncate our clinical and professional thinking to meet the demands of shrinking budgets and evidence based practice, we should embrace our capacities for observation and ‘reverie’ not only within our clinical work, but in the professional activities beyond. Using brief discussion of the work of artists, the paper revives our knowledge of the unconscious mind’s potential for repair, often making creative developments out of forgotten resources in unnoticed spaces. In fact it is the forgotten, unnoticed and discarded that have the potential to be the richest resources in a time when more conventional resources are fading