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Introduction
No full textThis is a book of stories about mothers who are accused of harming and, in some instances, killing their children; stories about the children who go on to harm or kill others and about the challenges to professionals, therapists and social workers, who work with them
Observation and attention in professional network meetings for children in care
No full textThis paper gives an overview of some theoretical ideas about attention to introduce case examples illustrating the contribution of attention in observation-based therapeutic interventions to the work and thinking of professional networks for young children in care. In conclusion, the theoretical ideas of Freud and Bick are linked with observational therapeutic support and the value of work discussion in supporting practitioners is highlighted
The inspiration of the ancients: Ceres and Proserpina from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. Infant observation meets the classics.
No full textThis paper makes a link between classical literature and psychoanalysis by way of a parallel in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Infant Observation. The writer uses Ted Hughes’s translation of the tale of Ceres and Proserpina to link the myth of the seasons’ renewal with the psychoanalytic development of the baby seen in psychoanalytic terms. The story told by Hughes is seen as an illuminating version of the infant’s farewell to life at the breast, the dawning of anal and genital stirrings and the dramatic appearance of the Oedipal configuration. Pluto ravishes Proserpina away to Hades and she has to be half yielded up by her mother Ceres; while in the end both darkness and light, grief and happiness, winter and summer are seen as a complementary part of the human condition just as after the surmounting of weaning comes the advent of depressive feelings
Psychoanalysis, social science and the Tavistock tradition
No full textThis article is about the connections between the fields of sociology and psychoanalysis, as they have been present in the traditions of the Tavistock Clinic and Institute of Human Relations from their origins to the present day. It describes a ‘double dissonance’ in this relationship, in that the Tavistock’s commitment was never to psychoanalysis or to sociology, narrowly conceived. Its interest was in a broad conception of the social sciences, involving socio-psychological, socio-technical and ecological perspectives, and it developed a broader social engagement of psychoanalytic perspectives than that of a conventional psychoanalytic institute. Nevertheless, the Tavistock synthesis has been an original and valuable one. The Tavistock Institute’s model of research has been closely linked, through its consultancy practice, to social action, and it has investigated and initiated democratic forms of organisation. The Tavistock Clinic developed a model of mental health care and professional education within the National Health Service, which provided support to individuals, families and communities at each stage of the human life cycle. Although both of these models have been placed under pressure in the individualist and market-oriented climate of recent decades, both traditions survive and retain a potential for the future
A single case of psychoanalytic infant observation and what it reveals about loss and recovery in infancy
No full textThe existence of unconscious mental states within individuals is a fundamental premise in psychoanalytic enquiry. The conjunction of facts arising from psychoanalytic thought, line-by-line, in-vivo, and focused selective coding established the meaning and cause of effects. Psychoanalytic infant observation holds a unique position in relation to this ongoing theoretical interplay, as it both continues the psychoanalytic tradition and establishes the technique as a valid method of studying babies in a naturalistic setting. The infant observation concerns aspects of developmental continuity/discontinuity, with reference to how significant environmental change impacted upon the infant’s developing psyche. The infant requires an internal resilience that can withstand the uncertainty and doubt created by broken contact and to find the means by which new links can be sustained and nourished. When the infant does allow himself to be “gathered together” into reciprocal exchanges, his body movements return once again to a more discernible rhythm, and he enters a more integrated state
The desert, the jungle, and the garden: Some aspects of autistic functioning and language development
No full textThis chapter focuses on a retrospective qualitative study based on psychotherapy sessions with children presenting autistic features who use language in atypical ways. The purpose of this research was to explore what factors could hinder or enhance the development of communicative language and symbolic thinking. The method of analysing two different cases was chosen because of similarities but, more importantly, marked differences between the two children’s clinical presentations. The two children selected for the research presented language difficulties and had been previously diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, they had very different clinical presentations. Autism is considered to be a syndrome with a multi-factorial aetiology and there is much to be investigated and discovered about it. Most researchers and clinicians agree that nature and nurture both play a role in its genesis, and that it has genetic, organic, psychological, and environmental factors implicated in it, to different degrees
An exploration into the impact of a child psychotherapist's pregnancy on her clinical work
No full textPregnancy is dramatic evidence of the difference between men and women and the “for ever incomprehensible and mysterious, strange and apparently hostile” nature of pregnancy. Pregnancy would have been an ever-present reality in S. Freud’s own childhood as his mother was in an almost perpetual pregnant state, giving birth to seven more children before he was 10 years old. The pregnancy afforded a space to communicate aspects of him that were concerned and understanding, the work was incomplete. The therapist’s pregnancy dramatically brings her sexual life into the work. The pregnancy can become synonymous with attacking or rejecting the therapeutic work. Rather than the pregnancy being a natural and accommodatable reality, it seems that, it becomes an aggressive sexual intrusion in the minds of both patients and therapists. Clinical supervisors described how pregnancy throws up particular complexities in clinical work with very deprived children and adolescents where phantasies can abound of dangerous and perverse intercourse resulting in malignant conception
Curiouser and curiouser: Researching the K link in psychoanalytic therapy
No full textThis chapter describes a piece of research, based on a single case study of psychoanalytic therapy with a young ADHD boy in care. It deals with the idea of using theorized thematic analysis, a branch of grounded theory, as an approach to tracking the unconscious dynamics in the therapy to understand better Simon’s internal situation and the shifts. The findings would add to the growing case for relational therapy for severely traumatized ADHD children like Simon, in place of more narrow medical treatment and behaviour management. The research takes its general methodological principles from thematic analysis: “a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns within data”. Thematic analysis has much in common with grounded theory, but without the aim of developing theory out of data analysis. A theme captures something important about the data in relation to the research question, and represents some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set
Medico-legal: Understanding testamentary capacity
No full textGabrielle Pendlebury and Ceylan Simsek from Medical Protection examine the legal framework of testamentary capacity, and give practical advice for GPs on what to do should they be asked to make an assessment
Thinking about ethnicity and gender diversity in children and young people
No full textBackground: Little is known about how social and cultural variants interact with gender identity development. This article aims to identify the ethnicities of children and young people referred to the United Kingdom’s national Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), and compare the ethnicity data with the UK child population and referrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
Methods: GIDS referrals made between April 2012 and April 2015 for children and young people were retrieved. Ethnicity data were obtained by the ‘16 + 1’ ethnicity list. Chi-square and t-tests were performed on the demographics.
Results: Less than 10% of the 995 referrals at GIDS were from Black and minority ethnic (BME) groups – an underrepresentation as compared with both the national population and CAMHS figures. No significant differences in ethnic representation were found between the demographic birth-assigned sexes, across age groups, or year of referral.
Conclusions: Hypotheses proposed for this underrepresentation take into account both the potential barriers to accessing services and the possibility of cross-cultural variations in the conceptualisations of gender, gender roles and gender diversity. Ethnicity, culture and religion, and their overlapping relationship with gender need further exploration